Scott Kelly was assigned to a one year mission to the International Space Station. His identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, recently retired from NASA. Both are veteran astronauts. And they saw an opportunity to conduct a really good experiment – or rather, a series of them.

NASA issued a call for proposals this week under the title “Differential Effects on Homozygous Twin Astronauts Associated with Differences in Exposure to Spaceflight Factors.” Essentially, Mark Kelly will serve as the Earth control for his brother to isolate the impact of spaceflight from normal biological variability. The solicitation reads, in part:

As currently conceived, this project will center on established plans for blood sampling on the flying twin at regular intervals before, during and after the one-year ISS mission, and will obtain corresponding samples from the nonflying twin, who will otherwise maintain a normal lifestyle.

Limited additional sampling of blood, saliva, cheek swabs and stool will be considered along with psychological or physical performance tests as long as they don’t interfere with primary research and the experiments illuminate one of more aspects of transient or long-term effects of spaceflight on humans.

In 2011, the brothers became the first siblings to be in space together while Scott Kelly’s ISS mission overlapped with Mark Kelly’s command of the final eight day Space Shuttle mission.

Read more about the call for proposals here.

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Merryl Azriel

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Having wandered into professional writing and editing after a decade in engineering, science, and management, Merryl now enjoys reintegrating the dichotomy by bringing space technology and policy within reach of an interested public. After three years as Space Safety Magazine’s Managing Editor, Merryl semi-retired to Visiting Contributor and manager of the campaign to bring the International Space Station collaboration to the attention of the Nobel Peace Prize committee. She keeps her pencil sharp as Proposal Manager for U.S. government contractor CSRA.

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