NASA’s oldest active astronaut will return to space in September for a six-month mission.
Don Pettit, 69, will go to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of the Roscosmos-led Soyuz MS-26 mission, which also includes Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner.
Russian state media source TASS said this week that the launch date will be September 11. The NASA astronaut assignment, announced in May, will see Pettit make his fourth trip to space, in addition to the 370 days he has spent in orbit. His previous missions include Expedition 6 in 2003, the short-lived 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, after Expeditions 47/48 and Expeditions 59/60, and Vagner’s second after Expedition 62/63.
Related: ‘Spaceborne’: Astronaut Don Pettit’s Amazing Space Photos (Gallery)
Pettit’s Expedition 6 mission was unexpectedly launched into orbit. He and the rest of the crew launched the space shuttle Endeavor on November 24, 2002, along with mission STS-113. Less than three months later, disaster struck. The Columbia Space Shuttle broke apart during its return on February 1, 2003, killing seven astronauts. Expedition 6 was unable to return to Earth aboard the shuttle Discovery as planned.
NASA grounded its shuttle fleet for two years to investigate the cause of the accident and find solutions. Although factors such as schedule pressure were mentioned in the Columbia Accident Investigation Board’s six-part report, the primary cause of the disaster was damage caused by a piece of foam that fell from a support beam onto the shuttle’s external tank, damaging the spacecraft’s wing and became vulnerable during the heat of reentry.
Meanwhile, Pettit’s crew returned home safely on May 4, 2003 in the Russian spaceship Soyuz TMA-1 after a rare landing malfunction that led to reentry and retrieval problems. The problem, which was later determined to have a 1 in 7,000 chance, led to a guidance system malfunction that caused the spacecraft to land about 250 miles (400 km) from its planned landing site, the European Space Agency said.
During the reentry, the crew experienced eight times Earth’s gravity compared to the normal six. According to RussianSpaceWeb, they were also not picked up by helicopter for five hours, partly due to communication problems that led to uncertainty about their landing zone.
Pettit was selected by NASA in 1993 and will make his first flight into space in 12 years. His time in orbit will include two spacewalks, 13 hours and 17 minutes in a spacesuit. One of his spacewalk milestones includes installing a urine-to-drinking system on the ISS, reducing the need for water shipments from Earth. Pettit is also the first astronaut to launch SpaceX’s Dragon cargo spacecraft into orbit on May 25, 2012, using the Canadarm2 robotic arm.
Pettit has also accomplished a number of feats, including patenting a zero-G coffee cup, witnessing a solar eclipse from space, capturing the historic transit of Venus in front of the Sun in 2012 from the ISS, and creating incredible timelapse photos.
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While Pettit is NASA’s oldest active astronaut, several other professional astronauts in their 60s have flown to space, including retired NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson (64) and Michael López-Alegría (66), who now command missions with Houston-based Axiom Space. Even older individuals with agency ties or connections have flown to orbit in recent decades.
For example, retired NASA astronaut John Glenn flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-95 in 1998 at the age of 77. Glenn, then a senator, served on the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging. According to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, he made a proposal for NASA to fly himself to investigate how space travel is similar to aging.
Earlier this year, Ed Dwight flew into space at the age of 90 aboard a suborbital Blue Origin mission called NS-25, making him the oldest person to fly to space. Dwight was selected by then-President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to train at the U.S. Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School. Because ARPS was a gateway to NASA’s astronaut corps at the time, Dwight was the first candidate for black astronauts in the United States, but NASA did not select him despite Air Force approval for spaceflight.
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 pilots who were privately evaluated on their suitability to fly into space against NASA’s requirements for astronauts at the time (the agency flew only male astronauts at the time, largely because it recruited from the male-dominated U.S. military at the time). NASA, however, did not approve the Mercury 13 program and ultimately selected the first female astronaut candidates in 1978.