Astronaut Scott Kelly braces for yearlong space flight

Astronaut Scott Kelly, left, and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko plan to spend more than 11 months aboard the International Space Station to collect data on the long-term physiological and psychological effects of the space environment. NASA

Shuttle veteran Scott Kelly first heard about NASA's plans to send an astronaut to the International Space Station for nearly a full year shortly after he completed his third space flight in 2011, a 159-day stay aboard the orbital lab complex.

The idea wasn't particularly attractive.

"At first, I'll be honest with you, I wasn't all that interested," he said. "I hadn't given it a whole lot of thought, and it was soon after I had gotten back from my last flight. So the difficulty of living and working in space for a long period of time was still kind of fresh in my mind."

But he thought about it. Then he thought some more.

Finally, after "mulling it over and talking about it with my family, friends, girlfriend, I decided the challenges that staying in space for a whole year presented were appealing to me, even considering the sacrifices you and your family are in for to do that kind of thing."

In November 2012, Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, veteran of a 176-day stay aboard the station in 2010, were assigned to what NASA bills as the "One-Year Mission." Now, after more than two years of training in the United States, Russia, Europe and Japan, they're finally ready to go.

Joined by Soyuz TMA-16M commander Gennady Padalka, one of Russia's most experienced cosmonauts, Kelly and Kornienko are scheduled for blastoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:42:57 p.m. EDT Friday (GMT-4; 1:43 a.m. Saturday local time), departing from the same launch pad used by Yuri Gagarin at the dawn of the space age more than 50 years ago.

If all goes well, the trio will dock at the space station's upper Poisk module around 9:36 p.m. after a four-orbit, six-hour rendezvous. Standing by to welcome them aboard will be Expedition 43 commander Terry Virts, cosmonaut Alexander Shkaplerov and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.

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Astronaut Scott Kelly braces for yearlong space flight