Meet Don Pettit, NASA’s oldest active astronaut who just completed a 220-day space mission | Technology News

Don Pettit, the oldest serving astronaut at NASA, splashed down to Earth on Sunday, April 20, after spending over 220 days on board the International Space Station (ISS)
The 70-year-old had embarked on the seven months-long science mission aboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft on September 11, 2024. The mission crew also comprised Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner.
After orbiting the Earth at least 3,520 times on-board the ISS, Pettit and his Russian crewmates touched down in Kazakhstan on Sunday in a parachute-assed landing of the Soyuz MS-26 space capsule.
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“…Pettit is doing well and in the range of what is expected for him following return to Earth,” the US space agency said in a statement.
“NASA is following its routine postlanding medical checks, the crew will return to the recovery staging area in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. Pettit will then board a NASA plane bound for the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston,” it added. The crew departed the ISS after handing over command of the spaceship to Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi.

At 70, Pettit is among the oldest people to travel to space — but not the oldest. That dinction goes to the late John Glenn, who made a horic return to space at 77 years old in 1998.
Who is Don Pettit?
Born in Oregon, US, on April 20, 1955, Donald R Pettit holds a chemical engineering degree from Oregon State University as well as a doctorate in the same field from the University of Arizona.Story continues below this ad
After college, Pettit worked as a staff scient at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico. He was selected as an astronaut NASA in 1996, according to the space agency’s website.
Pettit has been part of four spaceflights so far. His first spaceflight was in 2003 as part of Expedition 6 where he spent over five-and-a-half months aboard the ISS, performing experiments and undertaking space station construction.

In 2008, Pettit was part of a crew that was launched to the ISS on a 16-day mission which focused on “expanding the living quarters of the space agency and a regenerative life support system that reclaims potable water from urine.”
He served as a flight engineer for Expedition 30/31 in 2012, where he lived aboard the ISS for more than one year, NASA said. In total, the veteran astronaut has logged more than 590 days in space and at least 13 spacewalk hours.Story continues below this ad
A spacewalk or an “extravehicular activity (EVA)” is a period of activity spent outside a spacecraft an astronaut in space.