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NASA Scott Kelly of NASA, le , and Mikhail Kornienko of Roscosmos celebrate their 300th consecutive day in space. ByMarciaDunn The Associated Press CAPECANAVERAL,FLA. As- tronaut Scott Kelly closes the door Tuesday to an un- precedented year in space for NASA, flying back to the planet and loved ones he left behind last March. Kelly and his roommate for the past 340 days, Rus- sian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, check out of the International Space Station on Tuesday night, U.S. time. By the time their cap- sule lands in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, the pair will have traveled 144 million miles through space, cir- cled the world 5,440 times and experienced 10,880 or- bital sunrises and sunsets. Kelly photographed the first five sunrises of his wak- ing day Tuesday, posting the pictures on Twitter, before quipping, "I gotta go!" Piloting the Soyuz cap- sule home for Kelly, 52, and Kornienko, 55, will be the much fresher and decade younger cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, whose space station stint lasted the typical six months. The two yearlong space- men will undergo a series of medical tests following touchdown. Before com- mitting to even longer Mars missions, NASA wants to know the limits of the hu- man body for a year, minus gravity. As he relinquished com- mand of the space station Monday, Kelly noted that he and Kornienko "have been up here for a really, really long time" and have been jokingly telling one an- other, "We did it!" and "We made it!" "A year now seems lon- ger than I thought it would be," Kelly confided a couple weeks ago. Not quite a year — 340 days to be precise, based on the Russian launch and landing schedule. But still record-smashing for NASA. Kelly's closest U.S. con- tender trails him by 125 days. Russia continues to rule, however, when it comes to long-duration spaceflight. The world re- cord of 438 days was set by a Russian doctor during the mid-1990s. "A really smart person said to me one time, 'Team- work makes the dreamwork in spaceflight,' and space- flight is the biggest team sport there is," Kelly said Monday. He acknowledged each of the 13 U.S., Rus- sian, European and Japa- nese space fliers with whom he and Kornienko lived dur- ing the past year. "It's in- credibly important that we all work together to make what is seemingly impossi- ble, possible." For NASA, that mission possible is Mars. Scientists are hoping for more one-year subjects as NASA gears up for human expeditions to Mars in the 2030s. Radiation will be a top challenge, along with the body and mind's dura- bility on what will be a 2½- year journey round trip. The choice of the pio- neering Kelly turned out to be a bonanza. His identi- cal twin, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, offered himself up as a medical guinea pig so researchers could study the differences between the genetic doubles, one in space and the other on the ground. They provided blood, saliva and urine samples, underwent ultra- sounds and bone scans, got flu shots and more, all in the name of science. Kelly has spent more time in space, altogether, than any other American: 520 days over the course of four missions. Realizing this is likely his last jour- ney, it was "a little bitter- sweet" saying goodbye to his orbiting home. He'll have plenty of pictures, at least, for the scrapbook — he posted 1,000 dramatic, color-drenched pictures of Earth on his Twitter and In- stagram accounts. Spacemenreturning home a er year alo INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION By Don Babwin The Associated Press CHICAGO Homicides and shootings have doubled in Chicago so far this year compared with the same period in 2015, and police have seized fewer illegal guns — more possible sig- nals that officers have be- come less aggressive in the aftermath of a shooting video released last fall. Interim Police Superin- tendent John Escalante said Tuesday that he was so con- cerned about officers pos- sibly holding back that he filmed a video for the en- tire department in which he encouraged them to do their jobs and assured them that a federal probe of the force was not aimed at in- dividuals. "We are aware that there is a concern among the rank and file about not wanting to be the next YouTube video that goes viral," Escalante said in the video before in- troducing a segment of his own to remind viewers "why we took this job and swore this oath of office." The statistics come al- most exactly three months after the city on the orders of a judge released the video of officer Jason Van Dyke fir- ing 16 shots at Laquan Mc- Donald, a black teen killed in 2014. Since that day, Van Dyke has been charged with murder, and Superintendent Garry McCarthy has been fired.TheDepartmentofJus- tice launched a civil rights probe of the police force, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel has sought to regain public trust in the department and his own leadership. The crime figures of- fer a stark reminder that the nation's third-largest city is nowhere near shed- ding its reputation for fre- quent street violence. The vast majority of the blood- shed is happening in neigh- borhoods on the south and west sides, away from the Loop business district. In the first two months of the year, authorities re- corded 95 homicides, com- pared with 48 for the same period last year. Thus far, there have been 406 shoot- ings, or more than twice as many as the 180 reported in the same two-month period in 2015. TheMcDonaldcaseraised concerns that officers, fear- ful of attracting negative at- tention, may be pulling back and becoming more passive. Quietly, officers say they are not going to take chances that might land them in le- gal trouble or threaten their jobs and pensions. "I'm hearing that police are standing down because they're afraid what might happen to them, that when they get a call, they wait to see if someone answers it first," said the Rev. Mi- chael Pfleger, a prominent Roman Catholic priest and activist on the South Side. "I get really angry about that. If they are not going to do police work, they need to get out." Evidence of a pullback starts with an 80 percent decrease in the number of street stops that the officers have made since the first of the year. Escalante said he believes that decrease is largely tied to the fact that since the first of the year, of- ficers have been required to fill out far lengthier forms than the brief "contact cards" they used to use. The new forms were the result of changes in state law and an agreement be- tween the department and the American Civil Liber- ties Union of Illinois that required Chicago police to more thoroughly document and monitor street stops. AFTERMATH OF SHOOTING VIDEO Chicago police: Homicides rise as illegal gun seizures decline CHARLES REX ARBOGAST — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE Chicago interim Police Superintendent John Escalante speaks at a news conference. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2016 REDBLUFFDAILYNEWS.COM | NEWS | 5 B