PEORIA, Ill. — Are you going stir crazy with Illinois’ stay at home order? Imagine being up in space.
Retired astronaut Scott Kelly has been on several missions to the International Space Station, one of them being nearly a year long.
That’s a year away from friends, family, and daily activities that we have grown accustomed to.
Kelly said that he found methods to help while being isolated beyond Earth, one of those methods included having a schedule.
“Not only what you’re doing to work but it consists of taking care of yourself, taking care of your environment. In my case, in space, the space station,” Kelly said.
When you are stuck where you are, Kelly said a schedule helps the day go by faster.
“I think it’s important to have a schedule to know that you’re going to work for these hours, you’re going to take care of yourself, you’re going to connect with your family,” Kelly said.
Mental and physical health are also things to take care of when you are cooped up for long periods of time. Planning activities to cater to physical and mental health is also important to plan into your schedule.
“You’re going to exercise and get outside because that’s very important to your physical and mental health, it’s important to your immune system,” Kelly said.
Kelly said that pacing yourself is also important.
“That was one of the biggest factors for me in space for a year,” Kelly said.
His first long mission in space was 6 months, then Kelly said his year long trip is when he really learned that pacing yourself and keeping a schedule can help.
“Getting the appropriate amount of rest, getting the appropriate amount of exercise,” Kelly said.
Being up on the ISS is very similar to what we are having to do on Earth with quarantine to help flatten the curve of COVID-19.
“There is an interesting analogy to life in space as to what we are experiencing now,” Kelly said. “And that is we have to make sure that our immune system stays healthy, we have to make sure we don’t bring contaminants into our apartments, our homes by making sure they’re clean.”
Being up in space looking down on our planet really showed something to Kelly.
“Flying to space is a privilege and seeing the Earth from that vantage point shows you very well that we are all on this planet together. You don’t see any political boarders, we are all interconnected,” Kelly said. “And now I really more than ever with this virus, we’re even more interconnected than I thought for better and for worse.”
Kelly said it is going to take everyone to get past this pandemic.
“We are capable of incredible things, going to the moon, the space station. There is a lot we can do if we work together as a team and I just hope people recognized that and understand they’re part of a much, much bigger effort,” Kelly said.
He says that this is a situation that does need to be taken seriously, and we will take it one day at a time.
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