For NASA’s oldest serving astronaut Don Pettit, his 70th birthday was not about spending quietly with family and friends, cutting a cake, blowing out candles or any other traditional feat.
Instead, Don Pettit turned 70 in space, while hurtling towards the Earth in a spacecraft as he wrapped up a mission aboard the International Space Station.
A Soyuz capsule carrying the American and two Russian cosmonauts landed in Kazakhstan on Sunday, as Pettit celebrated his milestone birthday with a bang.
“Today at 0420 Moscow time (0120 GMT), the Soyuz MS-26 landing craft with Alexei Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Donald (Don) Pettit aboard landed near the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan,” a statement from Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said.
NASA said it was following its routine postlanding medical checks, and that the crew will return to the recovery staging area in Karaganda, Kazakhstan.
Pettit will then board a NASA plane bound for the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, while Roscosmos said the Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner will depart for a training base in Star City, Russia.
NASA images of the landing showed the small capsule parachuting down to Earth with the sunrise as a backdrop.
Who is Don Pettit?
Donald R. Pettit, fondly known as Don Pettit, was selected by NASA in 1966. The oldest serving NASA astronaut, Don Pettit holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Oregon State University and a Doctorate in Chemical Engineering from the University of Arizona.
Before becoming an astronaut, he was a staff scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico.
In his first space flight, Pettit was a NASA Science Officer for Expedition 6 in 2003.
This was Pettit’s fourth spaceflight, where he served as a flight engineer for Expeditions 71 and 72. He has logged 590 days in orbit throughout his career.
Spanning 220 days in space, Pettit and his crewmates orbited the Earth 3,520 times, completing a journey of 93.3 million miles. Pettit, Ovchinin, and Vagner launched and docked to the orbiting laboratory on Sept. 11, 2024.
During his time aboard the space station, Pettit conducted research to enhance in-orbit metal 3D printing capabilities, advance water sanitisation technologies, explore plant growth under varying water conditions, and investigate fire behavior in microgravity, all contributing to future space missions.
He also used his surroundings aboard station to conduct unique experiments in his spare time and captivate the public with his photography.