By Matthew Williams April 21, 2025
On September 11th, 2024, NASA astronaut Don Pettit travelled to the International Space Station (ISS) with cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner. Once there, they joined the crew of Expedition 71 and began their seven-month stay as part of Expedition 72. On Sunday, April 20th, the crew returned home just in time to celebrate Pettit's seventieth birthday, making him NASA's oldest active astronaut and the second-oldest person to go to space (after John Glenn).
Pettit, Ovchinin, and Vagner departed the ISS at 5:57 p.m. EDT (03:57 p.m. PDT) aboard the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft that had delivered them seven months prior. At 6:20 a.m. local time (9:20 p.m. EDT; 6:20 p.m. PDT), the capsule touched down safely in the Ulytau Region, about 300 km (186 mi) northeast of the Baikonur Cosmodrome. During their 220 days in space, Pettit and his crewmates orbited the planet 3,520 times and travelled over 150 million km (93.3 million mi). This was Pettit's fourth spaceflight to the ISS.
His first visit was as part of Expedition 6, which lasted from November 24th, 2002, to May 4th, 2003. He then served as a mission specialist on STS-126, a short-duration flight by the Space Shuttle Endeavour that delivered equipment and supplies to the ISS from November 15th to 30th, 2008. He returned to the ISS again on December 21st, 2011, as part of the Expedition 30/31 crew. While there, he operated the Canadarm2 to grapple and dock the first SpaceX Dragon 1 with the station.
During the capture, he reportedly said, "Houston, Station, we've got us a dragon by the tail."
Pettit worked on a series of science experiments during his time in orbit (590 days in total, more than any American male astronaut). These included research into in-orbit metal 3D printing, advanced water sanitization technologies, and microgravity experiments. He also achieved much acclaim for his astrophotography, which relied on a special rig (known as a "barn door tracker") that Pettit built himself during Expedition 6 using spare parts found around the station.
This device compensated for the ISS's movement relative to Earth, allowing Pettit to take some stunning high-resolution long-duration images of city lights at night. During his second visit to the ISS, Pettit invented the zero-g coffee cup (aka the Capillary Cup) using Mylar sheeting and Kapton tape, which allows astronauts to drink in zero-g without using a straw. The cup was featured in the May 2009 issue of National Geographic and developed into a 3-D printed plastic version designed by Dr. Mark Weislogel and his team at Portland State University.
Since returning home, Pettit has undergone the usual post-landing medical checks and returned to the recovery staging area with his crewmates. According to NASA officials, Pettit is in good health and reacclimating to Earth's gravity as well as expected. Pettit will then be flown by a NASA plane to the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston. After an illustrious career, returning home for his seventieth birthday was quite the amazing sendoff!
Further Reading: NASA
