NASA Astrophotography Legend Don Pettit Returns Back To Earth On His 70th Birthday

NASA astronaut Don Pettit is set to return to Earth on 19 April, his 70th birthday, after a 220-day stint aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The mission, his fourth, will bring his total time in space to 590 days, making him one of NASA’s most seasoned long-duration astronauts.

Science, Operations, And Earth Observation

Since launching aboard Soyuz MS-26, Pettit has clocked more than 3,500 orbits of Earth and covered some 93 million miles. His time on the ISS has been marked not only by research and operations but by a series of striking Earth observation images and time-lapse clips, which he’s shared regularly with the public.

Capturing Earth From Space

Among the highlights were shots of auroras cutting across polar skies, vivid displays of upper-atmosphere lightning over the Amazon, and a video showing the International Space Station in slow rotation, giving a rare sweeping view of the Northern Lights from orbit.

One standout clip captured formation flying by Starlink satellites, bright trails drawing clean lines through the night sky. Another showed the eerie, fast-flickering phenomena known as transient luminous events, sprites and blue jets, seen from above.

Pettit’s passion for orbital photography isn’t new, but this mission has taken it to another level. His visual logs have offered a fresh window into atmospheric science, satellite activity, and the sort of rarely seen space-weather events that rarely make it beyond scientific papers.

Don Pettit & Crewmates Coming Home

He’ll return to Earth alongside Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner. The trio will depart from the ISS’s Rassvet module in Soyuz MS-26 at 22:57 UTC, with landing scheduled in Kazakhstan’s steppe at 01:20 UTC on 20 April.

After a career spanning decades, Don Pettit’s birthday homecoming is more than symbolic, it’s the return of one of the most experienced observers of Earth from above, whose perspective has helped ground scientific wonder in striking visual reality.