NASA’s oldest astronaut set to return from space after over 3,500 orbits of Earth

NASA’s oldest active astronaut, Don Pettit, is preparing to return to Earth this week after an impressive six-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Pettit, 69, will head home alongside Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner on April 20, 2025.

The crew, who launched aboard Soyuz MS-26 in September 2024, will undock from the ISS at 3:27 AM IST and land in Kazakhstan at 6:50 AM IST the same day, NASA confirmed.

During their 220-day mission, the team will have completed 3,520 orbits around Earth, traveling a staggering 93.3 million miles.

This mission marked Pettit’s fourth journey to space, bringing his total time spent in orbit to 590 days. Ovchinin also completed his fourth spaceflight, with a total of 595 days in space. For Vagner, this was his second mission, pushing his total time in orbit to 416 days.

Their return follows the recent arrival of a new crew — NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritskiy — who reached the ISS aboard Soyuz MS-27 on April 8.

Earlier, on March 18, a different crew — including Sunita Williams, Barry Wilmore, Nick Hague (NASA's Crew-9 commander), and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov — returned to Earth. That mission drew attention for its extended nine-month stay, though it was initially planned to last only eight days to test Boeing's Starliner spacecraft.

With Pettit’s departure, the ISS crew count will drop from ten to seven, as NASA’s Crew-10 astronauts — launched by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket — continue their mission aboard the station.