On March 2, 2016, at around 9 A.M. local time, in Kazakhstan, Scott Kelly plunged through the Earth’s atmosphere in a Soyuz spacecraft travelling at seventeen thousand miles an hour. As expected, atmospheric friction warmed up its heat shield so much that molten debris flew off. Rapid deceleration imposed more than six times the force of gravity on Kelly and his crewmates, the cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov.
Can the Human Body Endure a Voyage to Mars?
