A Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft carrying Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Wagner as well as NASA‘s oldest active astronaut Donald Pettit returned to Earth early Sunday (April 20).
The three crew members concluded a 7-month science mission aboard the International Space Station.
The Russian Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft carrying the trio touched down southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 6:20am (01:20 GMT) on Sunday, the landing confirmed by the United States’s NASA and Russia’s Roscosmos space agency.
NASA video showed the craft landing in Kazakhstan, after its descent was slowed by a parachute, and ground crews carrying the crew from the spacecraft.
“Its deorbiting and descent to Earth were normal,” Russia’s Roscosmos space agency said.
The timing of their parachute-assisted return to Earth coincided with the US astronaut’s 70th birthday, NASA said on the social media platform X.
The crew arrived on the orbiting ISS laboratory on September 11, 2024, spending 220 days in space during which they orbited the Earth 3,520 times, completing a journey of 93.3 million miles (150.15 million km), NASA said in a statement.
Pettit spent his time researching “in-orbit metal 3D printing capabilities” and “water sanitisation technologies” while exploring plant growth and fire behaviour in space.
This was Pettit’s fourth spaceflight, with a total of 590 days in orbit logged throughout his career.
Ovchinin has notched up 595 days in space over four flights, while Wagner has reached a total of 416 days over two flights.
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Earlier this month, the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft carried another US-Russia crew – NASA’s Jonathan Kim and Russian crewmates Sergei Ryzhikov and Alexei Zubritsky – to carry out scientific experiments on the ISS.
