Why NASA's first year-long space station mission is vital for Mars travel
The first year-long International Space Station mission will launch on Friday, and it has more to do with Mars than you might think.
NASA's Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will be the first people to spend a full year onboard the ISS, and part of their job is to act as test subjects for future long-term space journeys.
Astronauts have been living and working onboard space stations since the Soviet Union's Salyut program in the early 1970s, but we still know very little about what happens to the human body after spending more than six months in space. With Kelly and Kornienko living in space for a year, scientists will have ample opportunity to monitor how zero gravity effects their bone and muscle mass, their eyesight, and their mental health. As this NASA video explains, this experiment could prove very helpful when planning a mission to Mars.
more
http://www.dailydot.com/geek/nasa-video-iss-mars/
