Seventy and Still Rocketing: Don Pettit Returns from Space
Don Pettit, America’s oldest active astronaut, returned to Earth on his 70th birthday after spending 220 days aboard the International Space Station. We explore Pettit’s stellar journey, record-breaking space career, and his graceful landing in Kazakhstan.
Well, blow me down and pass the Tang—America’s sprightliest space veteran, Don Pettit, has just landed back on dear old Earth, and on his 70th birthday no less! While most pensioners might be pottering about the garden or queueing at the chemist for a flu jab, Pettit has been floating about in zero gravity, conducting experiments and doing somersaults in his socks.
The Soyuz MS-26 capsule, which sounds a bit like a Russian vacuum cleaner but is actually a very serious spacecraft, made a rather graceful parachute-assisted plop into the Kazakh steppe at 06:20 local time (that’s 01:20 GMT for those keeping tabs). Alongside Pettit were Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, who, presumably, are also quite chuffed to be back where sandwiches don’t float.
The trio spent a whopping 220 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS), during which time they orbited the Earth 3,520 times. That’s enough circles to make your average hamster dizzy. According to the boffins at NASA, Pettit’s total time in space now stands at an impressive 590 days. That’s nearly enough time to binge-watch every episode of Doctor Who and still have a week left for Bake Off.
While Pettit now holds the title of America’s oldest active astronaut, he’s still playing second fiddle to the late, great John Glenn, who zoomed off into the cosmos at the age of 77 in 1998, proving once and for all that you’re never too old for a bit of adventure (or anti-gravity).
Now that Pettit is back on terra firma, he and his spacefaring mates will spend some time reacquainting themselves with gravity—a tricky business when you’ve spent months tossing your socks across the room without lifting a finger. Once they’ve got their land legs back, Pettit will be whisked off to Houston, presumably for a hero’s welcome and a proper cup of American coffee (which, sadly, still isn’t as good as a builder’s brew). The Russian chaps, meanwhile, will head to Zvyozdniy Gorodok, or Star City, near Moscow—presumably to be debriefed and plied with celebratory vodka.
Before they bolted out the ISS airlock, the crew handed over command of the orbital outpost to Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi, who now holds the keys to mankind’s most expensive flatshare.
In a twist that sounds like a plotline from a science fiction sitcom, two other NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, recently returned from a bit of an extended stay aboard the ISS. What was meant to be a quick eight-day visit turned into a full-blown nine-month jaunt due to some technical gremlins in their spacecraft. One can only hope they had enough books—and toilet roll.
All told, Pettit’s birthday landing is a rather poetic punctuation to a stellar career. At 70, he’s shown that age is no barrier when it comes to boldly going where few pensioners have gone before.
So, three cheers for Pettit—space scientist, septuagenarian, and certified gravity-defier. One small step for man, one giant leap for those of us who still forget where we left our specs.
At East India Story, we’re not just about what bleeds or leads. We’re about what inspires, surprises, and reminds us all that across mountains, cultures, —there’s more that connects us than divides us. Sources BBC
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