WEST ORANGE — Astronaut Scott Kelly has several concerns as he prepares to set an American record by spending a year in orbit aboard the International Space Station.

The West Orange native said he is thinking about the isolation, the confinement, the physical rigors of a microgravity environment and the coffee.

"It’s not like the coffee you get in Jersey," Kelly, 48, said Wednesday via phone from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "It’s like instant coffee and I drink a lot of it up there. I drink more of it up there than here on Earth."

Kelly is going to train for two years before he blasts off on a Soyuz rocket with a Russian counterpart, cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, in 2015. They will hover in the heavens to test the impact of prolonged spaceflight on the human body.

Russia set the precedent for extended stays in orbit during the 1990s, as four cosmonauts dwelled aboard the Mir space station for missions that lasted as long as 14 months.

If all goes well with Kelly and Kornienko, it increases the possibility of a manned flight to Mars.

The quality of coffee in the floating laboratory may be lacking, but the space station offers certain creature comforts, according to Kelly. It is equipped with a high-tech treadmill named after satirist Stephen Colbert, and NASA transmits the "NBC Nightly News" for Kelly to watch during his workouts. He usually gets a decent night’s sleep suspended in air and strapped to a wall.

"The best thing is when you get a resupply vehicle from Russia and it has some fresh fruit and vegetables in there," said Kelly, whose twin, Mark, is a retired astronaut and the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

"As far as the food is concerned, some of it’s pretty good. The barbecue beef is good. There’s granola with milk that I never have here on Earth, but for some reason the space version of it is pretty good," said Kelly. "The water’s good, even though it’s your recycled urine. It tastes better than what comes out of the faucet."

During a joint news conference Wednesday, Kornienko told reporters he anticipates this journey will be as challenging as his experience climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

"You cannot climb it and conquer it," Kornienko said. "It can let you in and let you out, so I was let in and let out. As for the flight, I think it’s a unique opportunity for me. It’s an opportunity to participate in a scientific program that cannot be done during the six-month flight."

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The loneliness of the extended space station stint will be somewhat mitigated by weekly videoconferences with friends and loved ones.

A divorced father of two daughters, Kelly said his family has been supportive of him embarking on long, risky trips into space.

Kornienko said his wife wept when he said he’d be gone for a year. Kelly quipped that the people close to him had a different reaction.

"No one cried for me, so that’s telling you something," said Kelly, who spent six months aboard a space station in 2010. "Everyone is excited about the idea of me doing it because they know it’s something I want to do even if they recognize it’s not going to be easy."

It helps, of course, that Kelly’s twin knows what it’s like to live in orbit. Mark Kelly’s NASA résumé includes the final flight of the space shuttle Endeavour in 2011.

Mark Kelly retired to spend time with Giffords, who was severely injured in a mass shooting in Arizona two years ago.

The expedition will be bittersweet for Scott Kelly. His mother, Patricia, died this year. He didn’t get a chance to tell her that he’d been tapped to become the first American to spend a year in space. During previous space station jaunts, he said he had long phone conversations with his mom, who was the first female police officer in West Orange.

"It will be different this time," said Kelly. "The other way it will be different is my dad had my mom before and now he doesn’t, so it will be different for him, too."

In addition to monitoring Kelly’s physical health during the flight, NASA will also be observing his psychological condition. A key component will be developing a good rapport with Kornienko.

Kelly and Kornienko have crossed paths several times over the past decade. They trained together in Russia when Kelly was a backup crew member for a 2010 Soyuz mission. Part of the process was spending 10 days in quarantine.

"We were eating three meals a day together and socializing," said Kelly. "It was like being in a hotel room with a bunch of people that are all isolated together. It’s not like I’m going with someone I’ve never met before. I feel like I know him pretty well, but we’ll have plenty of time to get to know one another better on the space station."

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