Russian Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, RN3BF, of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly have been selected for a one-year mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015. According to NASA, the mission will include collecting scientific data important to future human exploration of our solar system and to understand better how the human body reacts and adapts to the harsh environment of space as NASA plans for missions around the Moon, an asteroid and ultimately Mars. 

Kelly and Kornienko will launch aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from Kazakhstan in spring 2015 and will return to Kazakhstan in spring 2016. Kelly and Kornienko already have a connection; Kelly was a backup crew member for the Expedition 23/24 crews on the ISS where Kornienko served as a flight engineer. Both men will begin a two-year training program in the United States, Russia and other partner nations starting in early 2013.

“Selection of the candidate for the one-year mission was thorough and difficult, due to the number of suitable candidates from the Cosmonaut Corps,” said Russian Federal Space Agency General Director Vladimir Popovkin. “We have chosen the most responsible, skilled and enthusiastic crew members to expand space exploration, and we have full confidence in them.”

Kelly, a Captain in the US Navy, is from Orange, New Jersey. He has degrees from the State University of New York Maritime College and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He served as a Pilot on space shuttle mission STS-103 in 1999, Commander on STS-118 in 2007, Flight Engineer on the ISS Expedition 25 in 2010 and Commander of Expedition 26 in 2011. Kelly has logged more than 180 days in space.

Kornienko is from the Syzran, Kuibyshev region of Russia. He is a former paratrooper officer and graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute as a specialist in airborne systems. He has worked in the space industry since 1986 when he worked at Rocket and Space Corporation-Energia as a Spacewalk Handbook Specialist. He was selected as an Energia Test Cosmonaut Candidate in 1998 and trained as an ISS Expedition 8 backup crew member. Kornienko served as a Flight Engineer on the ISS Expedition 23/24 crews in 2010 and has logged more than 176 days in space.