NASA’s oldest active astronaut will return to space for a six-month mission in September.
69-year-old Don Pettit will fly International Space station (ISS) as part of the Roscosmos-led Soyuz MS-26 mission, which included Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner.
Russian state media source TASS said this week that the launch date would be September 11. The NASA astronaut’s mission, announced in May, will see Pettit make his fourth space trip, adding to the 370 total days he has spent in orbit. Previous missions included Expedition 6 in 2003, short-duration space shuttle mission STS-126 in 2008, and Expedition 30/31 in 2012.
The launch of MS-26 will also be Ovchinin’s third flight, following Expeditions 47/48 and Expeditions 59/60, and Vagner’s second flight, following Expedition 62/63.
Relating to: ‘Spaceborne’: Astronaut Don Pettit’s amazing space photos (gallery)
Pettit’s Expedition 6 mission was unexpectedly extended in orbit. He and the rest of the crew departed aboard the space shuttle Endeavor on November 24, 2002, on mission STS-113. Less than three months later, tragedy struck. Space shuttle Columbia broke down during reentry on February 1, 2003, killing seven astronauts. Expedition 6 failed to return to Earth aboard the shuttle Discovery as planned.
NASA grounded the shuttle fleet for two years to investigate the cause of the accident and find remedies. While the Columbia Accident Investigation Board’s six-volume report cited factors such as schedule pressure, the primary cause of the disaster was damage caused when a piece of foam fell from a strut into the shuttle’s external tank, damaging the spacecraft’s wing and destroying it, which is vulnerable during the heat of reentry.
Pettit’s crew, meanwhile, returned home safely aboard the Russian Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft on May 4, 2003, after a rare glitch during landing that caused reentry and retrieval problems. The problem, which was later determined to have a 1 in 7,000 chance of occurring, led to a malfunction in the guidance system that caused the spacecraft to land approximately 250 miles (400 km) short of its planned landing site, according to the European Space Agency.
During reentry, the crew experienced loads of eight times Earth’s gravity compared to normal six. According to RussianSpaceWeb, they were not picked up by helicopter for five hours, partly due to communication problems that led to uncertainty about the landing zones.
Pettit was selected by NASA in 1993 and would make his first spaceflight twelve years later. His time in orbit includes two spacewalks, totaling 13 hours and 17 minutes accumulated in a spacesuit. One of the milestones of the spacewalk includes the installation of an ISS system that turns urine into drinkable water, reducing the need to ship water from Earth. Pettit also became the first astronaut to capture SpaceX’s cargo Dragon spacecraft in orbit using the Canadarm2 robotic arm, on May 25, 2012.
Pettit’s accomplishments include patenting a zero-gravity coffee cup, witnessing a solar eclipse from space, capturing Venus’ historic transit across the sun from the ISS in 2012, and taking incredible timelapse photos through the window.
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Although Pettit is NASA’s oldest active astronaut, many other professional astronauts in their 60s have gone to space, including retired NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson, 64, and Michael López-Alegría, 66, who now lead missions with Houston-based Axiom Space. flew. Additionally, even older individuals with agency affiliations or connections have flown into orbit for decades.
For example, retired NASA astronaut John Glenn flew on the space shuttle Discovery mission STS-95 in 1998, when he was 77 years old. Glenn, then a senator, was part of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging. According to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, a push by NASA to investigate how spaceflight resembles aging has led to self-flight.
Earlier this year, Ed Dwight flew into space at the age of 90 on a suborbital Blue Origin mission called NS-25, making him the oldest person to fly into space. In 1961, Dwight was selected by then-President John F. Kennedy to train at the U.S. Air Force’s Aviation Research Pilot School. Since ARPS was the gateway to NASA’s astronaut corps at the time, Dwight was the United States’ first Black astronaut candidate, but NASA did not select him despite the Air Force’s approval for space flights.
Another Blue Origin flight carried “Mercury 13” pioneer Wally Funk into space in 2021 at the age of 82. In the early 1960s, Funk was part of a group of female aviators whose suitability for flying into space was specifically evaluated against NASA’s astronaut requirements. at the time (the agency was only flying male astronauts at the time, largely because it recruited personnel from the male-dominated US military at the time). However, NASA did not approve the Mercury 13 program and ultimately selected the first female astronaut candidates in 1978.