Scott Kelly grew two inches during year-long space flight

[SciTechPress]

When astronaut Scott Kelly arrived in Houston on Thursday morning (March 3), he was about two inches taller than when he left for the International Space Station a year before, according to NASA representatives. That's pretty normal for an astronaut, for without the full strength of gravity pressing down on gel-filled discs between the vertebrae, they expand and lengthen the spine. It's a weird but temporary side effect of spaceflight.

But even if Kelly hadn't had his vitals checked immediately upon landing, he might have noticed the slight height change. One of the first earthlings he saw was his identical twin, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, a man now notably, if only temporarily, shorter.

NASA scientists already knew that Kelly would walk a little taller when he emerged from the Soyuz capsule. But he'll have changed in other, less obvious ways, too, and that's the whole point of his record-breaking mission. Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko spent 342 days on the space station to help scientists measure the effects of long-term spaceflight on the human body.

http://www.nola.com/science/index.ssf/2016/03/scott_kelly_grew_two_inches_in.html