NASA’s oldest energetic astronaut returns to Earth on seventieth birthday

Cake, items and a low-key household celebration could also be what number of senior residents image their seventieth birthday.

However NASA’s oldest serving astronaut Don Pettit turned a septuagenarian whereas hurtling towards Earth in a spacecraft to wrap up a seven-month mission aboard the Worldwide Area Station (ISS).

A Soyuz capsule carrying the American and two Russian cosmonauts landed in Kazakhstan on Sunday, the day of Pettit’s milestone birthday.

“In the present day at 0420 Moscow time (0120 GMT), the Soyuz MS-26 touchdown craft with Alexei Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Donald (Don) Pettit aboard landed close to the Kazakh city of Zhezkazgan,” Russia’s area company Roscosmos mentioned.

Spending 220 days in area, Pettit and his crewmates Ovchinin and Vagner orbited Earth 3,520 instances and accomplished a journey of 93.3 million miles over the course of their mission.

It was the fourth spaceflight for Pettit, who has logged greater than 18 months in orbit all through his 29-year profession.

The trio touched down in a distant space southeast of Kazakhstan after undocking from the area station simply over three hours earlier.

NASA photographs of the touchdown confirmed the small capsule parachuting right down to Earth with the dawn as a backdrop.

The astronauts gave thumbs-up gestures as rescuers carried them from the spacecraft to an inflatable medical tent.

Regardless of trying a little bit worse for put on as he was pulled from the vessel, Pettit was “doing effectively and within the vary of what’s anticipated for him following return to Earth,” NASA mentioned in an announcement.

He was then set to fly to the Kazakh metropolis of Karaganda earlier than boarding a NASA aircraft to the company’s Johnson Area Middle in Texas.

The astronauts spent their time on the ISS researching areas corresponding to water sanitization know-how, plant progress in numerous circumstances and fireplace conduct in microgravity, NASA mentioned.

The trio’s seven-month journey was simply in need of the 9 months that NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams unexpectedly spent caught on the orbital lab after the spacecraft they have been testing suffered technical points and was deemed unfit to fly them again to Earth.

Area is without doubt one of the last areas of US-Russia cooperation amid an virtually full breakdown in relations between Moscow and Washington over the Ukraine battle.

© 2025 AFP