Don Pettit, the United States’ oldest serving astronaut, has made his return to Earth on a milestone day—his 70th birthday. Pettit landed safely alongside Russian crewmates Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner aboard the Soyuz MS-26 capsule, which touched down with the help of parachutes in the Kazakh steppe at 06:20 local time (01:20 GMT) on Sunday.
The trio had spent 220 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS), completing approximately 3,520 orbits of Earth during their mission, according to NASA. For Pettit, this marked his fourth journey to space, bringing his total time in orbit to an impressive 590 days.
Despite this achievement, Pettit is not the oldest person to travel to space—that title still belongs to John Glenn, who flew on a NASA mission at the age of 77 in 1998. Glenn passed away in 2016.
Following their return, Pettit and his crewmates will undergo a period of re-acclimation to Earth’s gravity. Pettit, originally from Oregon and born on April 20, 1955, will be flown to Houston, Texas, for post-mission activities. Meanwhile, Ovchinin and Vagner will return to Russia’s main cosmonaut training center, known as Star City, near Moscow.
Prior to their departure from the ISS, command of the station was officially handed over to Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi.
This landing follows another notable return last month, when NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams came back to Earth after spending over nine months aboard the ISS—far longer than their originally planned eight-day stay. Their delayed return was due to technical problems with their spacecraft, which postponed their trip home until March 18 of this year, after launching in June 2024.
