Those who make it through two years of intense training will join NASA's existing corps of 49 astronauts, down from a peak of 149 in 2000.
Kelly completed a 340-day mission that ended in March of this year, while his identical twin brother, Mark Kelly (also an astronaut), stayed down on the ground.
The retired Canadian astronaut touched down in Manchester where he spoke to local students during a special BBC Radio 5 live programme, revealing how he grew by 4cm (1.5 inches) and would "float past experiments on my way to the bathroom" aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Since there were at that time possible plans to have the astronauts splash down in the Atlantic Ocean, he was asked if there were United States rescue ships available there.
IWO JIMA, at Sea, April 17 — The three Apollo 13 astronauts splashed down gently today in the Pacific, ending a four‐day fight for survival.
Is this how astronauts look down, in the style of Antoine Saint-Exupéry Saint-ExupéryThe Little Prince", upon us and marvel at our antics?TerraServer is still a work in progress.
For astronauts looking down at the Black Sea or for scientists viewing imagery captured by satellites, the salty lagoons along the northern border of the Crimean Peninsula offer an unmistakable swash of colour.
Other writers had plenty to say about the moon landing – everyone had something to say about it – but few would have had the chops to bang out 115,000 words for publication in three issues of Life magazine, the first tranche of which, Mailer groans, was due less than three weeks after the astronauts splashed down in the Pacific.
Nasa's space shuttle era officially came to a close at 5.57am (10.57am BST) when the orbiter and its crew of four astronauts touched down at a remote runway in the northern reaches of Florida's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, watched by a few hundred space agency workers and reporters who turned out before dawn to witness a moment of history.
When astronauts gaze down at Earth in its entirety for the first time, they describe a profound psychological shift.
