Beam me back up, Scotty?
Though it was not even enough time to go around the Sun, astronaut Scott Kelly’s 340 days in space were enough to land him on a completely different planet when he returned to Earth.
On the day he left, March 28, 2015, straphangers were mourning the recent loss of $2.50 subway rides, gay marriage was illegal in many states and aims for the Republican nomination were just a twinkle in Donald Trump’s eye.
ASTRONAUT SCOTT KELLY LANDS BACK ON EARTH AFTER SPENDING 340 DAYS IN SPACE
Scott Walker and Jeb Bush were viewed as the GOP front-runners, long before the Wisconsinite bowed out after getting just a taste of the bitter 2016 election cycle at his party’s first two debates and the former Florida governor failed to make a splash in the early primaries.
The price of oil — already declining last year — was hovering around $50 before plunging at one point into the 20s and rebounding to around $36 early Wednesday morning.
South Carolina’s Walter Scott and Baltimore’s Freddy Gray were both still alive, and the officers involved in their deaths the following month were not yet facing charges.
New York City was recovering from an explosion and fire that killed two people and leveled a row of buildings on Second Avenue. The landlord of the buildings was charged with manslaughter last month for the “reckless” gas installation that caused the blast.
Leonardo DiCaprio had yet to receive an Academy Award, making him the subject of a sad Internet memes that would become joyous when he won for “The Revenant” this past week.
The Kardashians have remained in the news for pretty much the entire time Kelly was floating somewhere far away, though the Calabasas clan’s sports star father had yet to change the conversation around transgender people by asking the world to call her Caitlyn rather than Bruce.
Some things, however, have changed little since last year.
Alejandro G. Iñárritu had taken home the Best Director Oscar for Birdman last year, beginning a collection that he just doubled after his work with DiCaprio.
Seven people were killed in mass shootings in the United States the week before Kelly took off for a more peaceful place, according to shootingtracker.com.
The week before the space explorer landed at least 12 in the U.S. had died from mass shootings, defined as incidents where four or more are killed or injured.
While Kelly was out in the ice-cold cosmos, Earth itself was seeing a repeat of the same headlines the astronaut saw before he left.
His colleagues at NASA had declared 2014 the warmest year on record, though this January saw that mark beaten by 2015’s 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average, 0.29 degrees above the year before.
The civil war in Syria continued to drag on into its fifth year, with limited hopes for a solution and the government of Kelly’s Russian space comrade sending troops to the Middle East.
Despite continued bloodshed, the death of a 3-year-old Syrian boy named Aylan on a Turkish beach brought worldwide attention to the plight of the country’s refugees, more than a million of whom entered Europe last year.
Kelly was not completely cut off from his fellow Earthlings during his trip, posting regularly on Twitter with updates about his adventure for those looking for a little escapism.
“The journey isn’t over. Follow me as I rediscover #Earth!” he posted on Twitter Tuesday.
It remains to be seen what the astronaut will think of the world now that he’s back in the thick of it, or whether he’ll clamber to get back up to the space station as soon as possible.