Oldest Astronaut Don Pettit Celebrates 70th Birthday with Return to Earth

Don Pettit's journey marks an impressive total of 590 days in space amid his four missions and he now looks forward to the next chapter post-ISS.

Don Pettit, recognized as America's oldest active astronaut, has returned safely to Earth on his 70th birthday. The Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft, which also carried Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, executed a parachute-assisted landing in Kazakhstan's expansive steppe at 06:20 local time (01:20 GMT) on a Sunday morning.

During their mission, the crew spent an impressive 220 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS), completing 3,520 orbits around our planet, as reported by NASA. Pettit's latest adventure marks his fourth space mission, contributing to a grand total of 590 days spent in orbit. Although he has reached this noteworthy age milestone, he is not the oldest to venture into space; that title is held by John Glenn, who flew at 77 years old during a NASA mission in 1998 before passing away in 2016.

As the crew adjusts to the pull of gravity once again, Pettit will be transported to Houston, Texas, while Ovchinin and Vagner will head to Russia's main training facility in Zvyozdniy Gorodok, near Moscow. Before departing the ISS, they officially passed control of the station to Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi.

In a separate but notable return last month, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams made headlines as they came back from the ISS after more than nine months, significantly exceeding their planned stay of just eight days due to technical difficulties that delayed their return since June 2024.