The Expedition 72 crew launches aboard a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sept. 11, 2024. Credit score: NASA/Invoice Ingalls
When Don Pettit boarded the Worldwide Area Station (ISS) on Sept. 11, it was for him a homecoming. The 69-year-old chemical engineer already boasts a year-plus in house on three ISS missions between 2002 and 2012. However Pettit anticipated to have an vital first port of name after he entered his Earth-circling habitat, workplace, and lab for the following six months: the bathroom.
“After the hatches are open,” the Silverton, Oregon, native quipped in an interview, “and we’ve carried out all our congratulatory hugs of our crewmates, I’m in all probability going to make a beeline straight for the bathroom.”
Pettit’s pitstop is unsurprising after hours cocooned in Russia’s tiny Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft. He launched from Kazakhstan’s distant Baikonur Cosmodrome at 9:23 P.M. native time, with Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner. The trio orbited Earth twice, then docked simply over three hours after liftoff on the station’s Rassvet module, efficiently starting the following spaceflight of NASA’s oldest lively astronaut.
Expedition 72
Awaiting their arrival was Expedition 71 Commander Oleg Kononenko, the world’s most skilled house traveler with 1,100 days in house (as of Thursday afternoon) unfold over a five-mission profession. He and Pettit are well-acquainted — they spent 6.5 months collectively on the station in 2011-2012.
Kononenko and cosmonaut Nikolai Chub are nearing the tip of a steady 12 months in house. Their Expedition 71 crewmates embrace Matt Dominick, Mike Barratt, Jeanette Epps, Aleksandr Grebenkin, and Tracy Dyson — all ISS residents since March and all as a result of return dwelling within the coming weeks.
Additionally aboard the station are Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Their deliberate weeklong ISS keep in June was protracted to eight months by technical woes that stricken their Boeing Starliner spacecraft. Starliner returned to Earth empty final weekend. Wilmore and Williams will land subsequent February on SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom.
Within the meantime, Soyuz MS-25 lands on Sept. 23, bringing Kononenko and Chub dwelling after 373 weightless days and ending Dyson’s 184-day mission. Earlier than leaving the ISS, Kononenko will hand command to Ovchinin, formally beginning Expedition 72.
On Sept. 24, Crew Dragon Freedom is scheduled to launch. Two of its 4 seats can be taken by Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov. Its empty seats can be occupied by Wilmore and Williams when all 4 return to Earth subsequent spring. And on Oct. 6, Dragon Endeavour leaves the ISS with Dominick, Barratt, Epps, and Grebenkin after 216 days — the longest mission by any U.S. crew-carrying spacecraft.
After these departures, Expedition 72 will proceed into the autumn as Ovchinin, Vagner, Pettit, Hague, Gorbunov, Wilmore, and Williams start a busy increment of latest spacecraft, science, and spacewalks.
They are going to welcome 5 visiting autos — two research-laden Dragons in October and December, two Russian Progress ships in November and February, and the maiden voyage of Sierra Area’s cargo-carrying Dream Chaser mini-shuttle. These missions will restock the ISS, facilitating tons of of science and expertise investigations.
Spacewalks are additionally deliberate. One in December by Ovchinin and Vagner will set up a brand new X-ray spectrometer. And as much as 5 U.S. spacewalks will collect microbial specimens, put together for future ISS Roll-Out Photo voltaic Array (IROSA) upgrades, and emplace a brand new silicon tracker layer on the station’s Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) to enhance its sensitivity.
An extended profession
For Pettit, Expedition 72 marks a welcome return to his completely happy place in house. “I’m like a cowboy that wishes to be on a horse out within the vary,” he mentioned. “I’m an astronaut that must be sitting on a rocket and flying in house.”
Pettit is considered one of NASA’s longest-tenured astronauts nonetheless on lively responsibility. A employees scientist at New Mexico’s Los Alamos Nationwide Laboratory earlier than his 1996 NASA choice, his first spaceflight took place accidentally — however was impinged by tragedy.
In 2001, he joined the Expedition 6 backup crew. However when a primary crew member was medically grounded the next 12 months, Pettit took his place and launched to the ISS on shuttle Endeavour in November 2002.
Three months later, Columbia disintegrated throughout re-entry, killing her crew and stalling the half-built station. In Might 2003, Pettit grew to become one of many first People to land in Russia’s Soyuz craft. That drama-tinged homecoming inadvertently entailed a steep ballistic re-entry that subjected Pettit and his crewmates to harsh acceleration hundreds.
When shuttle missions resumed, Pettit rode Endeavour once more on STS-126 in November 2008. Throughout that flight, he examined a self-made zero-gravity espresso cup that permitted astronauts to drink espresso with out the encumbrance of a straw.
Pettit’s espresso cup gained the first-ever patent for an object invented in house. He intends to make good use of his invention on Expedition 72, pulling the cups out for celebratory occasions so his crewmates can “drink in a way that civilization is used to.”
His final ISS mission from December 2011 to July 2012 raised his space-time tally to 369 days — the fourth American to move a 12 months in orbit. Throughout that flight, SpaceX’s first Dragon cargo ship visited the ISS. And it was Pettit who famously radioed to Mission Management: “Houston, Station, seems to be like we’ve received us a dragon by the tail!”
Self-described on his X (previously Twitter) profile as an engineer by education, a scientist by career, and an explorer by coronary heart, Pettit discovered fame for his “Saturday Morning Science” and “Science Off the Sphere” — impromptu, comical and sometimes quirky demonstrations that introduced the wonders of weightlessness to audiences on Earth.
In a single session, he confirmed how music from an MP3 participant brought on water drops to oscillate. One other demonstrated static electrical energy with aluminum foil and Lego bricks. And a 3rd noticed him play a makeshift didgeridoo, customary from an ISS vacuum cleaner hose.
Requested if he has related plans this time spherical, an impish smile creased Pettit’s lips. “After all,” he mentioned. “I’d not fly in house with out doing a science or instructional demonstration in my off-duty time.”
That off-duty time additionally permits him to bask in pictures — a love he has nurtured since sixth grade. Pettit’s jaw-dropping footage from the station’s multiwindowed cupola vary from star trails to the bubbling glow of nighttime metropolis lights on Earth.
Throughout Expedition 72, he plans to {photograph} high-altitude noctilucent clouds and look ahead to adjustments to the Solar because it nears photo voltaic most. He may also preserve his digicam at hand for serendipitous occasions, “since you are there and since you may.”
Sexagenarian spaceflight
Whereas he’s at the moment the oldest active-duty astronaut at 69, Pettit is just not the primary sexagenarian to go to house. That honor belongs to Story Musgrave, who flew house shuttle Columbia in 1996 aged 61. Neither is he historical past’s oldest spaceman. Others flew of their seventies: from Mission Mercury hero John Glenn to Virgin magnate Richard Branson, and from Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of America’s first man in house, to the oldest ISS customer, 72-year-old Larry Connor.
Nonetheless extra flew at much more superior ages. Aviator Wally Funk grew to become the oldest girl astronaut at 82. Eighty-year-old Jon Goodwin was the primary individual dwelling with Parkinson’s illness to succeed in house. And in Might 2024, Ed Dwight — sculptor, former aviator, and one-time candidate for the primary African-American astronaut — flew Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule to the sting of house, aged 90 years and 253 days.
However sexagenarians have carved their very own spectacular area of interest within the annals of house journey. In 2004, 63-year-old Mike Melvill grew to become the primary industrial astronaut when he flew SpaceShipOne to the sting of house. And several other over-60s have visited the ISS, together with fare-paying vacationers Dennis Tito, Gregory Olsen, and Charles Simonyi, in addition to Axiom non-public astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria, Eytan Stibbe, Peggy Whitson, and John Shoffner. In 2013, Pavel Vinogradov noticed his sixtieth birthday in house. And planetary scientist S. Alan Stern and enterprise capitalist Lane Bess have flown suborbital missions with Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin.
When Pettit launched this week, he surpassed his 65-year-old Expedition 71 crewmate Barratt because the oldest individual to fly a months-long house mission. By the point he returns to Earth subsequent April, Pettit may have accrued 570 days in house — making him America’s second most skilled astronaut behind Whitson.
Nor does Pettit count on Expedition 72 to be his closing mission. “I wish to say that is my subsequent spaceflight,” he mentioned. “I come alive once I’m in orbit. There’s a sure side of once I go into house that simply essentially is on resonance with my soul.”
