NASA's Oldest Astronaut Celebrates 70th Birthday With Return To Earth

NASA's oldest active astronaut, Don Pettit, celebrated his 70th birthday by returning to Earth after a seven-month mission aboard the ISS. The Guardian reports: A Soyuz capsule carrying the American and two Russian cosmonauts landed in Kazakhstan on Sunday, Pettit's birthday. "Today at 0420 Moscow time (0120 GMT), the Soyuz MS-26 landing craft with Alexei Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Donald (Don) Pettit aboard landed near the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan," Russia's space agency Roscosmos said.

Spending 220 days in space, Pettit, Ovchinin and Vagner orbited the Earth 3,520 times and completed a journey of 93.3m miles over the course of their mission. It was the fourth spaceflight for Pettit, who has logged more than 18 months in orbit during his 29-year career. Nasa said in a statement that Pettit was "doing well and in the range of what is expected for him following return to Earth." A recording of the touchdown can be viewed here.

Earlier this year, Pettit managed to take one of the best photos ever captured from space. "When I first saw it, I was dazzled by its beauty," wrote Ars Technica's Eric Berger. "But when I looked further into the image, there were just so many amazing details to be found."

"In this image, one can see the core of the Milky Way galaxy, zodiacal light (sunlight diffused by interplanetary dust), streaks of SpaceX Starlink satellites, individual stars, an edge-on view of the atmosphere that appears in burnt umber due to hydroxide emissions, a near-sunrise just over the horizon, and nighttime cities appearing as streaks."

Re:

[bjoast]

But how do you really feel?

Re:

[Ol Olsoc]

Light pollution and space junk over a dying Earth on a background of indifferent stars at infinity.

At least you'll expire with it, so it's a net plus.

Oldest astronaut?

[smooth wombat]

Wouldn't James Lovell be the oldest astronaut (he's 97)? Or are they only talking about active astronauts?

Buzz Aldrin is next at 95.

Apollo astronauts still alive [apollo11space.com].

Don Pettit

[necro81]

Don Pettit is one of NASA's best astronauts ever. He's flown four (?) missions in his career, multiple spacewalks, and racked up 590 days in orbit - more than any other American man. (Peggy Whitson holds the record for any American - 675 days.) In his "off time" while on station, he does amazing photography [petapixel.com] (the image in this article is just one example of many [petapixel.com]). He also produces really neat video [youtube.com] demonstrations [youtube.com] of life [youtube.com] and science in zero-g, and is always willing to speak [sciencefriday.com] to [youtu.be] others [youtube.com] about space, his experiences, and how important the work is.

Radio

[JBMcB]

The amateur radio group my son belongs to set up a radio rig at a local magnet school to talk to the IIS. They got to ask Mr. Petit (KD5MDT) a question, which was really cool. The students were mainly amazed watching the home-built antenna track the IIS, as it orbits so fast you can see the antenna moving. It also gives you a cool visual indicator on how much time you have to talk, which isn't a lot.