NASA's Don Pettit celebrates 70th birthday while returning from space

NASA astronaut Don Pettit marked his 70th birthday in a truly out-of-this-world fashion, hurtling back to Earth aboard a spacecraft after completing a seven-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Pettit, the oldest active astronaut with NASA, was part of the Soyuz MS-26 mission, which landed in Kazakhstan on Sunday, April 20, 2025.

The Soyuz capsule, carrying Pettit alongside Russian cosmonauts Alexei Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, touched down near the town of Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan. The crew had spent 220 days in space, orbiting Earth 3,520 times and covering a distance of 93.3 million miles during their mission.

This was Pettit's fourth spaceflight, adding to a career that has spanned 29 years and a total of more than 18 months spent in orbit. The landing occurred at 4:20 Moscow time (1:20 GMT), with NASA and Roscosmos confirming the safe return of the crew.

Although the astronauts were greeted with a series of thumbs-ups as they were helped from the capsule into an inflatable medical tent, Pettit was described as being in good health, though understandably a bit worse for wear after the journey. NASA reassured the public that Pettit's condition was within normal expectations following re-entry.

Pettit and his fellow astronauts will be flown from Kazakhstan to Karaganda, and then onward to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas for further medical evaluations and a well-deserved rest. The milestone birthday, however, might have to wait for a more low-key celebration once the space veteran is back home.