NASA’s oldest astronaut felt the decades melt away in space before returning on his 70th birthday
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Fresh from space, NASA’s oldest full-time astronaut said Monday that weightlessness made him feel decades younger, with everyday aches and pains vanishing.
Don Pettit marked his 70th birthday on April 20 by plunging through the atmosphere in a Russian Soyuz capsule to wrap up a seven-month mission at the International Space Station.
In his first public remarks since touchdown, Pettit said he threw up all over the Kazak steppes upon touchdown, the result of feeling gravity for the first time in 220 days.
Returning to Earth has always been “a significant challenge” for his body, Pettit said from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“I didn’t look too good because I didn’t feel too good,” he said, adding that his body’s normal “creaks and groans” returned.
In weightlessness, on the other hand, Pettit felt the decades melt away.
“It makes me feel like I’m 30 years old again,” said Pettit, an astronaut since 1996 who ventured to space four times. “All that kind of stuff heals up because you’re sleeping, you’re just floating and your body, all these little aches and pains and everything heal up.”
Mercury astronaut John Glenn was 77 when he returned to orbit on a short shuttle flight in 1998. But he’d been gone from NASA for decades and was close to wrapping up his Senate career.
Even a pair of 90-year-olds have flown to space, but only on 10-minute up-and-down hops by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company.
Pettit, an engineer who still feels “like a little kid inside,” focused on his astrophotography while at the space station, capturing auroras, comets and satellites streaking off in the distance.
He also conducted a slew of physics experiments in his spare time, like blowing and stacking bubbles, and forming a perfect ball of honey on a spoon with peanut butter, in order to share the experience with others.
“I’ve got a few more good years left,” Pettit said. “I could see getting another flight or two in before I’m ready to hang up my rocket nozzles.”
