Kathmandu: NASA astronaut Don Pettit, the oldest American currently serving in space, returned to Earth on Sunday — the day he turned 70 — after completing a 220-day mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Pettit landed alongside Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner in Kazakhstan’s steppe at 06:20 local time (01:20 GMT), aboard the parachute-assisted Soyuz MS-26 capsule, according to NASA.
During the mission, the trio orbited the Earth 3,520 times. It was Pettit’s fourth journey into space, bringing his total time spent off-planet to 590 days.
Although Pettit is now the oldest serving U.S. astronaut to have flown in space, he is not the oldest person to do so — that title remains with John Glenn, who flew aboard a NASA mission in 1998 at age 77.
The crew handed command of the ISS to Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi before departure. Pettit, originally from Oregon, will now undergo re-adaptation to Earth’s gravity before returning to Houston, Texas. His Russian colleagues will be transferred to Star City, Russia’s main space training base near Moscow.
Last month, another NASA mission made headlines when astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth after an unexpectedly extended stay of more than nine months on the ISS due to technical delays.
Source: BBC