International Space Station (ISS) crew and NASA astronaut Don Pettit landed in the Soyuz MS-26 space capsule with Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexei Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner in Kazakazkazgan, Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan April 20, 2025 April 2025. Image source: NASA/Bill Ingalls via Reuters
Cakes, gifts and low-key family celebrations may be how many older people draw on their 70th birthday.
But Don Pettit, the oldest astronaut of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), became a man in the seventies while stinging the earth in the spacecraft to end the seven-month mission of the International Space Station (ISS).
A Sioux capsule carrying Americans and two Russian astronauts landed in Kazakhstan on Sunday (April 20, 2025).
“Today, 4:20 Moscow time (1:20 GMT), the landing ship of Soyuz MS-26 landed with Alexei Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Donald (Don) Pettit landed near the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan,” said Russian space company Roscosmos.
Pettit spent 220 days in space with his crew Ovchinin and Vagner, spinning the Earth 3,520 times during his mission and completing a 93.3 million miles journey.
This is Pettit’s fourth space flight, and he has recorded more than 18 months in orbit in his 29-year career.
After evacuating from the space station three hours ago, the three landed in a remote area in southeastern Kazakhstan.
Images of NASA landing show small capsules landing on Earth with sunrise as the background.
As rescuers took them from the spacecraft to the inflatable medical tent, the astronaut gave a thumbs-up gesture.
NASA said in a statement that while Pettit looked a bit bad when he pulled out of the boat, he “did doing well and did a great job of expecting him after returning to Earth.”
He then prepared to fly to Karaganda in Kazakh City and boarded a NASA plane to the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Texas.
NASA said astronauts spent a lot of time in ISS research areas such as water disinfection technology, plant growth under various conditions, and fire behaviors of microgravity.
The trio’s seven-month trip was only nine months away from NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams who were unexpectedly staying in orbital labs, testing the spacecraft they were testing suffered technical problems and were deemed unsuitable to bring them back to Earth.
Space is one of the last areas of Ukrainian cooperation with the United States and Russia amid almost complete breakdown of relations between Moscow and Washington.
publishing – April 20, 2025 05:00 pm ist
