Not many individuals have fun their birthday by burning a fiery arc by way of the ambiance, pulling 4.4gs in freefall again to planet Earth, thudding into the bottom, and emptying their abdomen on the steppes of Kazakhstan.

Nobody has ever executed it on their seventieth birthday.

Maybe that is acceptable as a result of NASA astronaut Don Pettit is a singular particular person. His birthday is April 20, and when the Soyuz spacecraft carrying him landed at daybreak in Kazakhstan, the calendar had turned over to that date. John Glenn, then 77, was older when he went to house. However nobody as outdated as Pettit had spent so long as he had in orbit, 220 days, on a mission.

On Monday, just a little greater than every week after getting back from orbit, Pettit met with reporters at Johnson Area Middle. “It is good to be again on planet Earth,” he mentioned. “As a lot as I really like exploring house, going into the frontier, and making observations, you do attain a time when it is time to come house.”

Flying in house at 70 years outdated

Pettit first went into house on the age of 47 for his first of three long-duration missions to the Worldwide Area Station. Since then, he has flown a shorter shuttle mission and two extra space station increments. All informed, he has lived in house for 590 days, the third-most all-time amongst NASA astronauts.

“I’ve acquired a couple of creaks and groans in my physique, however mainly I really feel the identical as I did 20 years in the past, and coming again to gravity is provocative,” he mentioned.

After each considered one of his missions, Pettit mentioned the readjustment to gravity for him has been a problem. He added that the shocking factor about spaceflight is that it isn’t a lot your giant muscle groups that ache, however the smaller ones.