NASA’s oldest active astronaut will return to space in September for a six-month mission.
Don Pettit, 69, will fly to International Space Station (ISS) as part of the Soyuz MS-26 mission led by Roscosmos, which includes Russian cosmonauts Alexei Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner.
A source in Russian state media TASS said this week that the launch date would be September 11. The NASA astronaut assignment, announced in May, will see Pettit make his fourth trip into space to add to the 370 days he has accumulated in orbit. His 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 Ovčinin’s third flight after Expeditions 47/48 and Expeditions 59/60 and Wagner’s second after Expedition 62/63.
Related: ‘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 launched on Space Shuttle Endeavor along with mission STS-113 on November 24, 2002. Less than three months later, tragedy struck. Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry on February 1, 2003, killing seven astronauts. Expedition 6 was unable to return to Earth aboard the space shuttle Discovery as planned.
NASA grounded its shuttle fleet for two years to investigate the cause of the accident and make repairs. While the Columbia Accident Investigation Board’s six-part report cited factors such as time pressure, the primary cause of the disaster was damage caused by a piece of foam falling from a prop onto the shuttle’s external tank, damaging the spacecraft’s wing and leaving it vulnerable during the heat of reentry.
Meanwhile, on May 4, 2003, Pettit’s crew returned home safely on a Russian Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft after a rare malfunction during landing that led to problems with reentry and extraction. According to the European Space Agency, the problem – later found 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 intended landing site.
During reentry, the crew experienced loads of eight times Earth’s gravity compared to the normal six. According to RussianSpaceWeb, they were also not picked up by a helicopter for five hours, partly due to communications problems that led to uncertainty about their landing zone.
Pettit was selected by NASA in 1993 to make his first space flight in a dozen years. His time in orbit includes two spacewalks, clocking up 13 hours and 17 minutes in the spacesuit. One of his spacewalk milestones is the installation of an ISS system that converts urine into drinking water, reducing the need for water supplies from Earth. Pettit is also the first astronaut to capture SpaceX’s Dragon cargo spacecraft in orbit using the Canadarm2 robotic arm on May 25, 2012.
Pettit’s accomplishments also include patenting a zero-G coffee cup, observing a solar eclipse from space, capturing the historic 2012 transit of Venus across the Sun from the ISS, and taking incredible time-lapse photographs from a window.
While Pettit is NASA’s oldest active astronaut, several other professional astronauts in their 60s have flown into space, including former NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson, 64, and Michael López-Alegría, 66, who now command missions with Houston-based Axiom Space. Over the decades, even older individuals with agency affiliations or connections have also flown into orbit.
For example, retired NASA astronaut John Glenn flew in 1998 at the age of 77 on the Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-95. Glenn, a senator at the time, was part of the US Senate Special Committee on Aging. According to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, he made NASA an opportunity to fly himself to study how spaceflight is like aging.
Earlier this year, Ed Dwight flew into space at the age of 90 aboard Blue Origin’s suborbital mission called NS-25, making him the oldest person to fly into space. Dwight was selected by then-President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to train at the U.S. Air Force Aeronautical 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 spaceflight.
The next Blue Origin flight carried “Mercury 13” pioneer Wally Funk into space at the age of 82, in 2021. In the early 1960s, Funk was part of a group of female pilots who were privately evaluated for spaceflight fitness against NASA requirements to astronauts. at the time (the agency then flew only male astronauts, largely because it recruited from the then male-dominated US military). However, NASA did not support the Mercury 13 program and eventually selected the first female astronaut candidates in 1978.