A story that might not have gotten noticed:

The Astronaut Who Agreed to Leave Earth for 342 Days

And CNN’s story:

Astronaut begins U.S. history-making mission

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly has started a trip to the record books.

He plans to spend 342 days on the International Space Station — the longest stretch of time any U.S. astronaut has spent in space.

Kelly lifted off Friday aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket that launched from Kazakhstan. The rocket docked at the ISS at 9:33 p.m. ET, according to a tweet from NASA, with hatches between the Soyuz and the space station scheduled to open about 11:15 p.m. ET.

Kelly will stay twice as long as any U.S. astronaut has ever stayed on the space station, giving scientists a chance to study how the human body responds to long-duration space flights. On Earth, scientists will perform parallel studies on Scott Kelly’s identical twin brother, retired astronaut Mark Kelly.

And yes, the Mark Kelly mentioned is the same Mark Kelly who is Gabby Giffords’ husband.

The Right Stuff: The Kelly brothers have it.