NASA Marks a 67-Year-Old Astronaut’s Birthday While Returning Him From Space
As of now, the most senior active American astronaut is Don Pettit, who turned 70 just recently. Pettit, along with his Russian colleagues Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, landed the Soyuz MS-26 space capsule on Kazakhstan’s steppe, in a region near the country’s city of Žezqazghan, on Sunday at 06:20 local time (01:20 GMT). As per the data from NASA, Pettit, along with his crew, completed 3,520 orbits around the Earth and spent about 220 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
As noted, in the last decade he has completed four missions, and this time he clocked in an additional 70 days, making a total of 590 days hut his record. The sole record of “oldest human ever in orbit” still belongs to John Glenn who flew in a NASA mission in 1988 after turning 77, then passed on 2016.
Tough Transitioning To Earth
Adjusting to the sensation of body weight in an environment with actual gravity is challenging, so Pettit and the two Russian cosmonauts will need to adjust for some period of time after disembarking the space capsule. Following disembarkment from the company they are employed by, ‘Space and Advanced Technology’ Institute based north of Moscow, Pettit, a born Oregonian, will be flown to Texas Houston, and Ovchinin and along with Vagner will head to Russia’s main space training base in Zvyozdniy Gorodok(city of star) near Moscow.
Prior to departing from the ISS, the pod was handed over to Japanese Takuya Onishi for his navigation duties.
Others of NASA Targets
In Orbit on March 18, NASA was able to remove two of its astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, whose rotation onboard the ISS lasted nine months instead of the pre-established period of a week—fully integrating them into ground control operations in April 2025. While on the ISS, they undertook a significant amount of engineering work. Riding on Jumper34YX, all relocation procedures were completed by June 2024, from docked position to the low Earth orbit inclined elliptical trajectory rendezvous with the Clark space station. Wilmore and Suni had the remainder of the jump spent in March preparing the Jumper 34YX’s operational systems for flight. Due to the numerous technical complications, the spacecraft was only ready for moonset maneuvers by the 18th of March.
