Point of departure

Enviable courage and strength

these astronauts fulfilling a research wish

an expectation that someday out there

other intrepid voyagers will arrive..

Yet from a perspective of I AM

out there and in here are seamless.

Dualistic travel with end destination

may seem as a dream in our suffering time..

Before the time of that planned departure

many may wake from the dream

to declare that the destination 

lies here in our point of departure...

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are due to launch on their yearlong mission to the space station on Russian Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with cosmonaut Gennady Padalka. Kelly and Kornienko's mission will mark the first yearlong mission aboard the station, and the first time an American has spent a continuous year in space.

"Kelly and Kornienko will spend a year on the space station to better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to the harsh environment of space," NASA officials said in a statement. "Data from the expedition will be used to determine whether there are ways to further reduce the risks on future long-duration missions to an asteroid and eventually Mars." [