US’ Oldest Astronaut Returns to Earth on 70th Birthday

2025-04-20 04:38:36

(MENAFN) Dan Pettit, the longest-serving astronaut from the United States, has made his return to Earth, coinciding with his 70th birthday.

The Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft, which carried Pettit alongside his Russian colleagues Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, made a parachute-assisted touchdown in Kazakhstan's vast steppe at 06:20 local time (01:20 GMT) on Sunday.

The crew had spent 220 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS), during which they orbited the planet a total of 3,520 times, based on NASA.

This mission marked Pettit's fourth trip to space, bringing his cumulative time spent in space to 590 days. However, Pettit does not hold the record for the oldest person to have flown in space—John Glenn still holds that title, having flown at the age of 77 during a NASA mission in 1998. Glenn passed away in 2016.

Following the landing, Pettit and his Russian teammates will undergo a period of re-acclimatization to Earth's gravity.

Afterward, Pettit will be flown to Houston, Texas, while Ovchinin and Vagner will return to Russia's primary space training center in Zvyozdniy Gorodok (Star City) near Moscow.

Before departing the ISS, the crew handed over command of the space station to Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi.

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