Oldest Serving Us Astronaut Returns To Earth On 70th Birthday

America's oldest serving astronaut Don Pettit has returned to Earth connected his 70th birthday.

The Soyuz MS-26 abstraction capsule carrying Pettit and his Russian crewmates Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner made a parachute-assisted landing successful Kazakhstan's steppe astatine 06:20 section clip (01:20 GMT) connected Sunday.

They spent 220 days connected committee nan International Space Station (ISS), orbiting nan Earth 3,520 times, nan US abstraction agency Nasa said.

For Pettit - who has now spent a full of 590 days successful abstraction - it was his 4th mission.

Still, he is not nan oldest personification to alert successful orbit - that grounds belongs to John Glenn, who aged 77 flew connected a Nasa ngo successful 1998. He died successful 2016.

Pettit and nan 2 Russian cosmonauts will now walk immoderate clip readjusting to gravity.

After that, Pettit - who was calved successful Oregon connected 20 April 1955 - will beryllium flown to Houston successful Texas, while Ovchinin and Vagner will spell to Russia's main abstraction training guidelines successful Zvyozdniy Gorodok (Star City) adjacent Moscow.

Before their departure from nan ISS, nan unit handed bid of nan spaceship to Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi.