admin
Cake, gifts, and a low-key family celebration may be how many senior citizens picture their 70th birthday.
But NASA’s oldest serving astronaut, Don Pettit, became a septuagenarian while hurtling towards Earth in a spacecraft, concluding a seven-month mission aboard the International Space Station.
But NASA’s oldest serving astronaut, Don Pettit, became a septuagenarian while hurtling towards
A Soyuz capsule carrying the American and two Russian cosmonauts landed in Kazakhstan on Sunday — the day of Pettit’s milestone birthday.
“Today at 04:20 Moscow time (01:20 GMT), the Soyuz MS-26 landing craft with Alexei Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner, and Donald (Don) Pettit aboard landed near the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan,” Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, announced.Spending 220 days in space, Pettit and his crewmates, Ovchinin and Vagner, orbited Earth 3,520 times and completed a journey of 93.3 million miles over the course of their mission.
It was Pettit’s fourth spaceflight; he has logged more than 18 months in orbit during his 29-year career.
The trio touched down in a remote area southeast of Kazakhstan after undocking from the space station just over threesearch button
Most Widely Read Newspaper
Home
News
Featured
Politics
Metro Plus
Business
Sports
HealthWise
PUNCH Lite
Editorial
Columns
Videos
Continuation From Print
NASA’s oldest astronaut returns to Earth on 70th birthday
20th April 2025
The Nasa astronaut Don Pettit gestures as he is carried to a medical tent shortly after landing in Kazakhstan on Sunday. Photo: Bill Ingalls/AP
Agency Report
Kindly share this story:
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready…
Cake, gifts, and a low-key family celebration may be how many senior citizens picture their 70th birthday.
But NASA’s oldest serving astronaut, Don Pettit, became a septuagenarian while hurtling towards Earth in a spacecraft, concluding a seven-month mission aboard the International Space Station.
A Soyuz capsule carrying the American and two Russian cosmonauts landed in Kazakhstan on Sunday — the day of Pettit’s milestone birthday.
But NASA’s oldest serving astronaut, Don Pettit, became a septuagenarian while hurtling towards
“Today at 04:20 Moscow time (01:20 GMT), the Soyuz MS-26 landing craft with Alexei Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner, and Donald (Don) Pettit aboard landed near the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan,” Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, announced.
Spending 220 days in space, Pettit and his crewmates, Ovchinin and Vagner, orbited Earth 3,520 times and completed a journey of 93.3 million miles over the course of their mission.
It was Pettit’s fourth spaceflight; he has logged more than 18 months in orbit during his 29-year career.
The trio touched down in a remote area southeast of Kazakhstan after undocking from the space station just over three hours earlier.
NASA images of the landing showed the small capsule parachuting to Earth with the sunrise as a backdrop.
Related News
Astronauts stuck in space for nine months return to earth
Stranded US astronauts to return to Earth on Tuesday – NASA
NASA warns of ‘city killer’ asteroid with 3.1% chance of earth impact in 2032
The astronauts gave thumbs-up gestures as rescuers carried them from the spacecraft to an inflatable medical tent.
Despite appearing slightly worn out as he was helped from the vessel, Pettit was “doing well and within the expected range following return to Earth,” NASA said in a statement.
He was scheduled to fly to the Kazakh city of Karaganda before boarding a NASA plane to the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Texas.
NASA said the astronauts spent their time on the ISS researching areas such as water sanitisation technology, plant growth under varying conditions, and fire behaviour in microgravity.
The trio’s seven-month trip was slightly shorter than the nine months NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams unexpectedly spent stuck in the orbital lab after the spacecraft they were testing developed technical issues and was deemed unfit to return them to Earth.
Space remains one of the final areas of cooperation between the United States and Russia, despite an almost complete breakdown in relations over the
