While many senior citizens may celebrate their 70th birthday with cake, gifts, and family, NASA’s oldest serving astronaut, Don Pettit, marked this milestone in an extraordinary way—by returning to Earth after completing a seven-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
On April 20, 2025, the same day Pettit turned 70, a Soyuz capsule carrying him and two Russian cosmonauts, Alexei Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, made a successful landing in Kazakhstan. According to Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, the Soyuz MS-26 capsule landed near the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan at 4:20 Moscow time (1:20 GMT).
Pettit, along with his crewmates, had spent a total of 220 days in space. Throughout their mission, they orbited Earth 3,520 times, completing a journey of 93.3 million miles. For Pettit, this was his fourth spaceflight, bringing his total time spent in orbit to over 18 months during his remarkable 29-year career with NASA.
After undocking from the ISS, the astronauts descended to Earth in the small capsule, with NASA capturing stunning images of the landing against the backdrop of the sunrise. Upon landing, the astronauts gave thumbs-up gestures, signaling their safe return as rescuers helped them out of the capsule and into a medical tent for evaluation.
Though Pettit appeared to be a bit weary after the journey, NASA confirmed that he was “doing well and in the range of what is expected for him following return to Earth.” He was then transported to Karaganda, Kazakhstan, before flying to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas.
During their time aboard the ISS, Pettit and his crewmates focused on a variety of scientific experiments, including research on water sanitization, plant growth under different conditions, and fire behavior in microgravity. Their seven-month mission ended just short of the nine months that two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, spent unexpectedly stranded on the ISS due to technical issues with their spacecraft.
Despite the ongoing geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and Russia, space remains one of the last remaining areas of cooperation between the two nations.
