His one year mission complete, Scott Kelly will retire from NASA

Scott Kelly is all smiles after landing in Kazakhstan earlier this month. (credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA)

Just 10 days after landing safely back on Earth, astronaut Scott Kelly has announced he will retire from NASA at the beginning of April. Kelly has been with the space agency since 1996, and he has flown two shuttle missions in addition to serving two stints aboard the International Space Station.

Kelly holds duration records for both the longest US spaceflight, 340 days, as well as most cumulative time in space by a NASA astronaut, 520 days. He hopes those records are fleeting, however. “Records are meant to be broken,” Kelly said Friday. “I am looking forward to when these records in space are surpassed.”

Although he is retiring from NASA, Kelly will continue to participate in the follow-up research that will monitor his health after he returned from space, including regular medical check-ups at Johnson Space Center, MRIs, blood draws, and other procedures. The goal is to understand how his body changed during the long duration flight so that NASA can better mitigate against the health hazards posed by long spaceflights.

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