In brief
On his 70th birthday, the oldest serving U.S. astronaut, Don Pettit, safely returned to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-26 capsule. Accompanied by Russian crewmates Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, Pettit landed in Kazakhstan's vast steppe at 06:20 local time.
Spending a whopping 220 days in orbit on the International Space Station (ISS), they circled the globe an incredible 3,520 times! This marks Pettit's fourth mission and elevates his total time in space to 590 days. While he’s now the oldest active astronaut, the record for oldest person in space still belongs to John Glenn, who flew at 77. After readjusting to gravity, Pettit will head to Houston while Ovchinin and Vagner will return to Russia. Just last month, two NASA astronauts completed a longer-than-expected mission aboard the ISS, illustrating the dynamic nature of space exploration challenges.
