Touchdown on the steppes of Kazakhstan coincides with US astronaut Donald Pettit’s seventieth birthday.
Russian astronauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Wagner have returned to Earth together with American Donald Pettit after a seven-month science mission on board the Worldwide Area Station (ISS).
The Russian Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft carrying the trio touched down southeast of the city of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 6:20am (01:20 GMT) on Sunday, the touchdown confirmed by the US’s NASA and Russia’s Roscosmos area company.
The timing of their parachute-assisted return to Earth coincided with the US astronaut’s seventieth birthday, NASA stated on the social media platform X.
Comfortable birthday, @astro_Pettit! Many completely happy returns (together with this one) 🥳
The MS-26 Soyuz spacecraft touched down in Kazakhstan at 9:20pm ET—or, in native time, 6:20am April 20, Pettit’s seventieth birthday. pic.twitter.com/qFM5fAxnA0
— NASA (@NASA) April 20, 2025
NASA stated the crew was moved to a restoration staging space within the metropolis of Karaganda, including that Pettit was doing properly.
The crew arrived on the orbiting ISS laboratory on September 11, 2024, spending 220 days in area throughout which they orbited the Earth 3,520 occasions, finishing a journey of 93.3 million miles (150.15 million km), NASA stated in a press release.
Pettit spent his time researching “in-orbit steel 3D printing capabilities” and “water sanitisation applied sciences” whereas exploring plant progress and hearth behaviour in area.
This was Pettit’s fourth spaceflight, with a complete of 590 days in orbit logged all through his profession. Ovchinin has notched up 595 days in area over 4 flights, whereas Wagner has reached a complete of 416 days over two flights.
Area exploration has remained a uncommon avenue of cooperation between the US and Russia for the reason that latter unleashed its conflict in Ukraine in February 2022.
Earlier this month, the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft carried one other US-Russia crew – NASA’s Jonathan Kim and Russian crewmates Sergei Ryzhikov and Alexei Zubritsky – to hold out scientific experiments on the ISS.
Nevertheless, the US and different Western international locations have ceased different partnerships with Roscosmos as a part of a slew of sanctions positioned on Russia over the conflict.
Astronauts, who’re educated and authorized by NASA and others just like the European Area Company, are referred to as cosmonauts after they symbolize Roscosmos.
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