After record-breaking mission, Kelly slowly adjusting to gravity

Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.

Fresh from a year in space, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly said Friday his muscles and joints ache. His skin is so sensitive it burns when he sits or walks. And he can’t sink a basketball shot.

He’s surprised – not necessarily about his basketball skills, but everything else. After his previous half-year space-station mission five years ago, he wasn’t nearly this tired or sore.

“Adjusting to space is easier than adjusting to Earth for me,” he said at his first postflight news conference Friday.

Like other astronauts, he got taller in space. He said he gained 11/2 inches. But he lost it almost as soon as he stood on solid ground.

Kelly returned from the International Space Station on Wednesday, ending a 340-day mission that set a U.S. record. It took him a full day to get back home from the landing site in Kazakhstan to Houston. That’s when the aches and pains set in – this from the guy who hopped out of his space capsule and later promptly jumped into his backyard pool.

Initially, he felt better than last time, but that quickly changed.

The 52-year-old astronaut said because his skin hasn’t had significant contact with anything for so long – in space, clothes just float around you – “it’s very, very sensitive. It’s almost like a burning feeling wherever I like sit or lie or walk. I’m not wearing these shoes all the time,” he said, kicking up his right foot, which sported a shiny black dress shoe. “I just wore them for you guys.”

Thick running shoes are his preference these days; they make his feet “feel a little bit better.”

As for the culture shock of being back on Earth, Kelly expects that will hit soon. “From having so little on the space station and so few choices about what you’re going to do every day, what’s available to you, to basically having just about anything,” he told reporters.

His first food back on Earth? A banana he found on his bed aboard the plane. He didn’t realize the irony until he ate half of it; he cavorted around the space station a few weeks ago in a gorilla suit, a gag gift from his identical twin, Mark, a retired astronaut.

The genetic doubles – one in space, one on the ground – took part in medical studies throughout the flight. NASA wants to know how the body and mind adjust to long periods in space before sending astronauts to Mars; expeditions are planned for the 2030s.