Cosmonaut Shares What He Missed Most After a Year in Space — and It Makes Perfect Sense

As a child, Mikhail Kornienko was fascinated when his father, a military helicopter pilot, returned home from a mission, bringing cut-out pieces of orange parachute chutes, which his mom used to make stunning dresses for him. On March 25, 2015, Kornienko sat in a salon chair, facing a mirror, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, to get his hair cut, for the last time until one year. Two days later, he boarded a space vessel and lifted off from Kazakhstan for what was supposed to be a year-long stay in space.

Upon his return home in March 2016, the Russian cosmonaut spoke with National Geographic, recalling what he missed the most about Earth during the “One Year Mission.” As a crew member of one of the most rigorous missions of NASA, Kornienko spent 340 days at the International Space Station (ISS) along with fellow NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, starting on March 28, 2015. He and Kelly were supposed to be the “guinea pigs” sent to space to learn how long-term stints in space affect the human body. Their experiments would enable NASA to plan how to design future missions to Mars, which could be as long as 500 days.

They also recorded their thoughts in daily journals to monitor the psychological effects of living in a microgravity environment. For an entire year, the two astronauts orbited the Earth more than 5,000 times, witnessing nearly 16 sunrises and sunsets in a day. On March 1, 2016, when Kornienko touched down in Kazakhstan in the Soyuz spacecraft and crawled his feet on the cool earth, he couldn’t do it without the support of some rescue members. He had forgotten how to walk, even how to stand. “You could trip, fall, hurt yourself. That’s why the rescue guys never allow you to walk at first. They pick you up and carry you,” Kornienko said in the interview.

The Atlantic explains that microgravity takes a huge toll on the human body. Instead of flowing in the normal direction, fluids in the body start rushing upwards, clogging the noses and making astronauts’ faces appear puffy. Bone and muscle mass decline, causing the body to become wobbly and disoriented when it returns to Earth. The fibers shrink. Plus, living in the proximity of galaxy dust and radiation, their bodies become much more vulnerable to diseases. “This is not a business trip to another city. When you miss your apartment, your home, your family. This is about missing the Earth as a whole. It is a completely different emotion," Kornienko described. 

"Therefore, when planning missions like the one to Mars, psychologists have to consider the point that people will miss the Earth. This is more than nostalgia. It’s hard, but I liked it because this is headed towards the future, and strictly speaking, it reflects the work of the cosmonauts. If we don’t destroy ourselves, the expansion into near space and then deep space will be inevitable. This is at the core of humanity,” he added. While in space, Kornienko and Kelly grew veggies like lettuce and zinnias and drank water that was recycled urine and sweat. He mentioned that it could still be possible to remain without a shower, but psychologically, the stay in space created “stressful conditions.”

“There is a shortage of greenery, for real, like not enough forest, summer, winter, snow; everything that has to do with Earth,” Kornienko explained. During his stay at the ISS, he even requested photographs of nature views to be sent to him in the spaceship visiting them to supply essentials. “I hung all of this around the module, so the flights would be more joyful. You grab onto it with your gaze, look at that little birch tree, and things get easier,” he recalled. But even though it was too hard physically, the journey was beautiful, he noted. The “green-red auroras, sparkling city lights, and the ocean’s atolls in breathtaking shades of turquoise, lilac, and blue.”  

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