PBS’ ‘Beyond a Year in Space’ shows Mars isn’t as far away as we thought
In the quest to put a man on Mars, the lessons learned from Scott Kelly’s year on the International Space Station are invaluable – among them what happens to the human body after it returns to full gravity. PBS’ “Beyond a Year in Space,” the follow-up to last year’s Emmy-winning “A Year in Space” that airs Wednesday, Nov. 15 (check local listings), follows the recently-retired American astronaut after his return to Earth on March 1, 2016, thus completing a record-breaking 340-day stay in orbit. It tracks him as he undergoes extensive medical testing and begins to feel the physical toll of an extended period in space. At the same, his twin brother, fellow astronaut Mark Kelly, underwent the same testing, which gave scientists a unique picture of the differences between what space and Earth environments do to two people stiff joints, skin sensitivity and flu-like symptoms – were annoying, they weren’t debilitating, though he does admit he had been less than enthusiastic about going back into space for about a year after his return. “I think what I said soon after I got back ...,” he recalls, “‘You know I would definitely fly in space again for a year, but I wouldn’t do it a second time.’ You know, in other words, having not done it before, I would do it again. I think I’m far enough away from it now that if you asked me the same question, ‘Would you do it again?’ I would say, ‘Absolutely!’ And I would do it a second time. Yeah. Sign me up. “I think the further we get away from anything in our lives that may be difficult or challenging,” he continues, “you know, you kind of forget about the hard stuff and think more about the stuff that was easy and the stuff that was fun and why you did it.” The film also introduces two astronauts as they train for a Mars mission – biologist Jessica Meir and former Navy pilot Victor Glover – and follow them at NASA and at home, as they go about their daily lives and talk about what it means to them to be the next generation of astronaut. “My class was the first time that it was 50 percent male and 50 percent female,” Meir says, “and so that got a lot of attention and a lot of press, and people were very excited about really highlighting that. “But, for us, I think we felt quite fortunate that we are in this time where it wasn’t a big deal for us. It just felt normal,” she continues. “And all of us came from different career fields, military pilots, engineers, me as a scientist, and none of us had ever felt differently, that there wasn’t anything that we couldn’t do. Not to take away from all of the struggles that we’ve had in generations before, but I think it’s a really positive sign that for us it was just normal, and I think that that’s just the way society has moved now, so I think that’s really a positive sign.”