Video NASA's oldest active astronaut on 220-day mission: 'I feel like a little kid'
Veteran astronaut Don Pettit conducted hundreds of hours of research and captured over half a million photos during his ISS mission.
abcnews.go.comHere’s the latest I can share based on recent reporting:
- As of 2025, NASA’s Don Pettit was widely reported as the agency’s oldest active astronaut, returning to Earth on his 70th birthday after a 220-day mission aboard the ISS. This milestone made him the oldest serving NASA astronaut to complete a long-duration flight in recent memory.[1][3]
- Multiple outlets confirmed Pettit’s healthy return and ongoing recovery at Johnson Space Center, with NASA noting he was doing well after landing in Kazakhstan and en route to Texas.[2][1]
- There was later reporting that one notable older astronaut, Jim Lovell, passed away at age 97 in 2025, marking the end of an era for the earliest generation of NASA spaceflight veterans. This is a separate event from Pettit’s activity and reflects changes in the roster of the oldest living astronauts over time.[6]
- For visual context, coverage from outlets like ABC News and NST Online captured Pettit’s reflections on the experience and his perspective on life after spaceflight, including footage and summaries of the mission’s science goals (water sanitation, plant growth, fire behavior in microgravity).[4][7]
If you’d like, I can pull a concise one-paragraph summary with timestamps and provide a short timeline of Pettit’s career highlights, or I can compile a quick, sourced digest focusing on the oldest living astronauts across recent years.