America's oldest-serving astronaut returns to Earth on his 70th birthday
20 April 2025, 13:39
The United States’ oldest-serving astronaut has safely returned to Earth on his 70th birthday.
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NASA’s Donald Pettit, alongside two Russian cosmonauts, had spent the last seven months on a missing to the International Space Station (ISS).
According to Russian space agency Roscosmos, the Soyuz MS-26 capsule carrying Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner and Pettit landed on the Kazakh steppe near the city of Zhezkazgan at around 6am on Sunday,
"Its deorbiting and descent to Earth were normal," the space agency said.
The three-man crew made the trip home after spending 220 days in space and orbiting the Earth 3,520 times, NASA said in a statement.
Pettit had been researching in-orbit metal 3D printing capabilities, water sanitisation tech and plant growth in space, NASA said.
NASA said it was following its routine post-landing medical checks, and that the crew would return to the recovery staging area in Karaganda, Kazakhstan.
Pettit will then board a NASA plane bound for the agency's Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, while Roscosmos said Ovchinin and Vagner will depart for a training base in Star City, Russia.
On Friday, Mr Ovchinin handed over command of the ISS to Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi in a change of command ceremony.
