Oldest Serving US Astronaut Returns to Earth on Milestone Birthday

Dan Pettit's extraordinary journey culminates in a historic return, celebrating an impressive milestone both in age and space travel.

NASA's oldest active astronaut, Dan Pettit, has safely returned to Earth on his 70th birthday, completing an impressive 220-day mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft, transporting Pettit along with Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, made a parachute-assisted landing in the serene steppes of Kazakhstan at 06:20 local time (01:20 GMT) on Sunday.

During their time aboard the ISS, the crew orbited the Earth a remarkable 3,520 times. With this latest mission, Pettit has now accumulated a staggering total of 590 days spent in space over four missions. While he is celebrated for his longevity as a serving astronaut, the record for the oldest person to fly in orbit still belongs to John Glenn, who participated in a NASA mission at the age of 77 in 1998.

As the crew adjusts back to gravity, Pettit, born in Oregon on April 20, 1955, is expected to head to Houston, Texas, while his Russian counterparts will return to Russia’s prominent space training facility in Zvyozdniy Gorodok, near Moscow.

Before departing from the ISS, the astronauts handed over command to Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi. This return comes after a recent NASA mission where astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams spent over nine months aboard the ISS, returning on March 18, an extension far beyond their planned eight-day stay due to technical complications with their spacecraft from June 2024.