NASA’s Oldest Active Astronaut Returns on Earth 70th Birthday After Seven‑Month ISS Mission

Cake, presents and a quiet gathering are how many people imagine a 70th birthday, but NASA veteran Don Pettit spent his milestone hurtling back to Earth after seven months aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

A Soyuz capsule carrying the American astronaut and Russian cosmonauts Alexei Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner touched down on the Kazakh steppe near Zhezkazgan on Sunday, 20 April 2025—Pettit’s 70th birthday. “Today at 04:20 Moscow time (01:20 GMT) the Soyuz MS‑26 spacecraft with Alexei Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Donald (Don) Pettit aboard landed near Zhezkazgan,” Russia’s space agency Roscosmos announced.

During their 220 days aloft, the crew orbited Earth 3,520 times, covering roughly 93.3 million miles. For Pettit—on his fourth flight—the mission pushes his total time in space past 18 months over a 29‑year career.

Post‑landing images released by NASA showed the capsule drifting beneath its parachute at sunrise. Rescue teams helped the trio out of the craft, where they exchanged thumbs‑up gestures before heading to an inflatable medical tent for routine checks. Although visibly fatigued, Pettit “is doing well and within the expected range after returning to Earth,” NASA said.

From Zhezkazgan, the astronauts were to fly to Karaganda and then onward to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas.

While on the ISS, the crew investigated water‑sanitisation technology, plant growth under varying conditions and fire behaviour in microgravity, NASA noted. Their 220‑day stay fell just shy of the nine months NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams spent unexpectedly stranded on the station last year due to technical problems with their test vehicle.

Even as broader U.S.–Russia ties have frayed over the war in Ukraine, joint space operations remain one of the few areas where the two nations continue to cooperate.