NASA Astronaut Don Pettit To Discuss Seven-Month Space Mission

To participate in person, U.S. media must contact the NASA Johnson newsroom no later than 5 p.m. Thursday, April 24, at 281-483-5111 or [email protected] . Media wishing to participate by phone must contact the newsroom no later than two hours before the start of the event. To ask questions by phone, media must dial into the news conference no later than 10 minutes prior to the start of the call. NASA's media accreditation policy is available online.

Questions also may be submitted on social media during the news conference by using #AskNASA. Following the news conference, NASA will host a live question and answer session with Pettit on the agency's Instagram . For more information, visit @NASA on social media.

Pettit returned to Earth on April 19 (April 20, Kazakhstan time), along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner. Pettit celebrated his 70th birthday on April 20. He spent 220 days in space as an Expedition 71/72 flight engineer, bringing his career total to 590 days in space during four spaceflights. Pettit and his crewmates completed 3,520 orbits of Earth over the course of their 93-million-mile journey. They also saw the arrival of six visiting spacecraft and the departure of seven.

During his time on orbit, Pettit conducted hundreds of hours of scientific investigations , including research to enhance on-orbit metal 3D printing capabilities, advance water sanitization technologies, explore plant growth under varying water conditions, and investigate fire behavior in microgravity, all contributing to future space missions.

He also spent time aboard the space station sharing his photography, often posting images to his X account . He took more than 670,000 photos during his stay.

Learn more about International Space Station research and operations at:

SOURCE NASA

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