NASA astronaut lands back on Earth on his 70th birthday

Following a seven-month stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA astronaut Don Pettit and two Russian cosmonauts landed safely in Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz spacecraft on Sunday local time. The touchdown was on the same day that Pettit, NASA’s oldest serving astronaut, turned 70.

The American astronaut departed the ISS on Friday with Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner. 

The final moments of the Soyuz spacecraft’s parachute-assisted descent were livestreamed and later shared on social media. Pettit’s journey home was far smoother than the wild ride that he experienced at the end of his first space mission in 2003.

Shortly before his departure from the space station some 250 miles above Earth, Pettit mused about what it’s like to come home.

In a post on X, Pettit wrote: “The feeling of being home is directly proportional to how far you have traveled. When going out to dinner, you feel home when pulling into the driveway. When touring about for a Sunday drive, you feel home when entering the outskirts of your town. When driving across the United States, perhaps on one of those memorable family vacations, you get a feeling of being home when you cross your state line (be sure to stop and take a family photo). When flying international, you feel home the first place your airplane returns to US soil. You may be 2000 miles from home, but you say to yourself, I am home.  

“After having been on Space Station for seven months, we will be returning on our Soyuz spacecraft landing on the steppes of Kazakhstan. When our capsule goes thump on those desert flats, I will be literally on the opposite side of Earth, nearly 12,000 miles from home. Yet I will be home. I can picture sometime in the future, a crew returning from Mars and after inserting themselves into low Earth orbit, they will look down at this blue jewel circling below and say, ‘I am home.’”

During the 220-day mission, Pettit and his crewmates orbited Earth 3,520 times and traveled 93.3 million miles. While Pettit spent much of his time working alongside his fellow astronauts conducting science research in microgravity conditions, he also took time out to capture some incredible photos and videos of Earth and beyond.