This handout picture courtesy of NASA shows the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft is seen as it lands in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan with Expedition 72 NASA astronaut Don Pettit, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner aboard, on April 20, 2025. | Photo by Bill INGALLS / NASA / AFP
WASHINGTON, United States – Cake, gifts and a low-key family celebration may be how many senior citizens picture their 70th birthday.
READ: Katy Perry roars into space on all-women flight
“Today at 0420 Moscow time (0120 GMT), the Soyuz MS-26 landing craft with Alexei Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Donald (Don) Pettit aboard landed near the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan,” Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said.
Spending 220 days in space, Pettit and his crewmates Ovchinin and Vagner orbited the Earth 3,520 times and completed a journey of 93.3 million miles over the course of their mission.
It was the fourth spaceflight for Pettit, who has logged more than 18 months in orbit throughout his 29-year career.
This hanodut picture courtesy of NASA shows NASA astronaut Don Pettit (C) being carried to a medical tent shortly after he, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner landed in their Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on April 20, 2025. The trio are returning to Earth after logging 220 days in space as a members of Expeditions 71 and 72 aboard the International Space Station. | Photo by Bill INGALLS / NASA / AFP
The trio touched down in a remote area just over three hours after undocking from the space station.
NASA images of the landing showed the small capsule parachuting down to Earth with the sunrise as a backdrop.
READ: NASA astronauts return to Earth after drawn-out mission in space
The astronauts gave thumbs-up gestures as rescuers carried them from the spacecraft to an inflatable medical tent.Despite looking a little worse for wearas he was pulled from the vessel, Pettit was “doing well and in the range of what is expected for him following return to Earth,” NASA said in a statement.
He was then set to fly to the Kazakh city of Karaganda before boarding a NASA plane to the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Texas.
The astronauts spent their time on the ISS researching areas such as water sanitization technology, plant growth in various conditions and fire behavior in microgravity, NASA said.
The trio’s seven-month trip was just short of the nine months that NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams unexpectedly spent stuck on the orbital lab after the spacecraft they were testing suffered technical issues and was deemed unfit to fly them back to Earth.
Space is one of the final areas of US-Russia cooperation amid an almost complete breakdown in relations between Moscow and Washington over the Ukraine conflict.
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Your subscription has been successful.
Read Next
Pope Francis, a boy: School nuns say ‘One isn’t born a saint’
Disclaimer: The comments uploaded on this site do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of management and owner of Cebudailynews. We reserve the right to exclude comments that we deem to be inconsistent with our editorial standards.
