Posted on 04/20/2025 6:43:51 PM PDT by BenLurkin
America's oldest serving astronaut Don Pettit has returned to Earth on his 70th birthday.
The Soyuz MS-26 space capsule carrying Pettit and his Russian crewmates Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner made a parachute-assisted landing in Kazakhstan's steppe at 06:20 local time (01:20 GMT) on Sunday.
They spent 220 days on board the International Space Station (ISS), orbiting the Earth 3,520 times, the US space agency Nasa said.
For Pettit - who has now spent a total of 590 days in space - it was his fourth mission.
Still, he is not the oldest person to fly in orbit - that record belongs to John Glenn, who aged 77 flew on a Nasa mission in 1998. He died in 2016.
Pettit and the two Russian cosmonauts will now spend some time readjusting to gravity.
After that, Pettit - who was born in Oregon on 20 April 1955 - will be flown to Houston in Texas, while Ovchinin and Vagner will go to Russia's main space training base in Zvyozdniy Gorodok (Star City) near Moscow.
Before their departure from the ISS, the crew handed command of the spaceship to Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
So William Shatner’s trip didn’t apply? I’m fairly sure his wasn’t the Kubrick show we just saw with six women. Perhaps that’s “sub-orbital” height.
SERVING astronaut. My bad.
What Shatner did was the same thing suborbital they didn’t actually go into space
I thought it said “surviving” astronaut.
It’s disheartening to read “oldest” in a headline and to then realize the person is younger than you.
A suborbital flight can penetrate the Karman line boundary into space. It just means there was no orbit around the earth. Up into space and then right back down.
Pettit is older than I am, but only by less than six weeks.
I asked my wife to look at my butt and see if God stamped an expiration date on me. She got deathly silent and said, "You would not want to know." Then I saw her reading our will again. LOL
Me = 77 in June and comfortably retired and owe nobody one damn cent. Wife person is 74 and in a similar situation. Life is good despite ailments of old age as long as we have our mental facilities. I am a news and political junkie and that keeps my mind alert. We also own an Antique Store and that keeps my wife busy and alert. Me = retired clinical pharmacist and wife person retired software engineer with degrees from UT El-Paso and others. I am a Gringo from Texas and she was a Mexican National until she gained her citizenship 50 years ago, the legal way. We often go to Europe on vacation. We both speak Spanish and Spain is our favorite destination. I grew up in Texas and South Louisiana. I started in the oilfield on boats and then roughnecking and the drilling rigs for 19 years and picked up my degrees in geology and pharmacy.
The American dream exists for anyone that gets off their ass and works and pursue it.
Where’s Katy Perry in all this?
She just made this earth changing flight yes?
No, it didn't - insofar as Shatner is not an astronaut.
He was a passenger - rating barely higher than ballast.
The term "astronaut" is defined as: Someone who has completed the requisite (rigorous) training.
Shatner was probably instructed about how to extinguish his cigarette when the warning display lit up, etc. - but did not undergo the prescribed (grueling) course of training to become an astronaut.
Regards,
Katy and the girls after their flight bought a toy sized replica of the Blue Orgin Rocket with electric vibration.... 😜😏
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