NASA Astronaut Don Pettit Celebrates 70th Birthday! | International Space Station

NASA Astronaut Don Pettit Celebrates 70th Birthday! | International Space Station

Prior to his departure, Expedition 72 flight engineer and NASA astronaut Don Pettit enjoyed a small birthday cake with his fellow crew members. At 5:57 p.m. EDT, on Saturday April 19, 2025, the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft undocked from the orbiting laboratory’s Rassvet module with NASA astronaut Don Petitt and Roscosmos cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner of Russia.

The spacecraft will make a parachute-assisted landing at 9:20 p.m. (6:20 a.m. Kazakhstan time, Sunday, April 20) on the steppe of Kazakhstan, southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan.

Follow Expedition 72:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

Expedition 72 Crew

Station Commander: JAXA Flight Engineer Takuya Onishi
Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner, Kirill Peskov, Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey Zubritskiy

NASA Flight Engineers: Don Pettit, Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, Jonny Kim

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.

Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
https://www.nasa.gov/iss-science 

For more information about STEM on Station:
https://www.nasa.gov/stemonstation 

Image Credit: NASA/JSC
Capture Date: April 19/20, 2025

#NASA #Space #ISS #Science #Astronauts #Astronaut #DonPettit #HappyBirthday #70thBirthday #Japan #日本 #JAXA #Cosmonauts #Russia #Россия #Roscosmos #Роскосмос #HumanSpaceflight #SpaceLaboratory #InternationalCooperation #Expedition72 #Expedition73 #UnitedStates #STEM #Education