在太空轨道上停留340天后，美国宇航员凯利和俄罗斯宇航员科尔尼延科安全返回地球。
星期三清晨，运载凯利、科尔尼延科和另一名俄罗斯宇航员沃尔科夫的俄罗斯联盟号飞船在天寒地冻的哈萨克斯坦平原地带安全着陆。在此3小时前，联盟号飞船从国际空间站起航。沃尔科夫在国际空间站停留了6个月，宇航员在国际空间站执行任务通常都是半年时间。
凯利目前是在太空停留时间最长的美国宇航员，他和科尔尼延科在国际空间站上环绕地球飞行了5440圈，飞行总长1亿4千4百万英里，看到了1万零880次日出日落。
这两名宇航员的使命是测试长期处于微重力环境对人类身体和心智的影响，以便为将来飞往火星或太阳系其它地方需要持续数年的宇航使命制定计划。
After 340 days in orbit, American astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko have returned safely to Earth.
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying Kelly and Kornienko and a second Russian cosmonaut, Sergey Volkov, made a soft landing on the frozen steppes of Kazakhstan early Wednesday morning, three hours after separating from the International Space Station. Volkov is back after spending the last six months aboard the ISS, the typical mission length for space station crews.
Kelly now holds the American record for the longest continuous time in space, as he and Kornienko circled the world 5,440 times aboard the ISS, covering 144 million miles and witnessing 10,880 orbital sunrises and sunsets.
The duo's mission was designed to measure how a long-term stay in a microgravity environment impacts the human body and mind, with an eye toward planning for future multi-year missions that will be necessary to take crews to Mars or other places in the solar system.
