2 astronauts will expand envelope with 1-year spaceflight

Kelly and Kornienko are scheduled to launch in March 2015 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft to spend a full year on the complex. Photo credit: NASA/Stephanie Stoll — Kornienko and Kelly are scheduled to launch in March 2015 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft to spend a full year on the complex. Photo credit: NASA/Stephanie Stoll

MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The two men assigned to a one-year spaceflight say their upcoming mission will allow the world to push deeper into space.

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will rocket into orbit from Kazakhstan in March. They will spend a year aboard the International Space Station.

At a news conference Thursday at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, Kelly and Kornienko said they anticipate many scientific gains from their mission. They say scientists need to know more about the prolonged effects of space on humans, before astronauts embark on Mars expeditions lasting three years, round trip.

Kelly and Kornienko have been training for this mission for two years. It will set a U.S. space endurance record. The world record, already claimed by Russia, is 14 months for a single flight.