The oldest astronaut in America Dan Pettit has returned to Earth for its 70th anniversary.
The Siluz MS-26 space capsule bearing Petit and its Russian teammates Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner made a parachute assisted by the Steppe of Kazakhstan at 06:20 Local time (01:20 GMT) on Sunday.
They spent 220 days on the International Space Station (ISS), orbit around Earth 3,520 times, said NASA from the American space agency.
For Petit – who has now spent a total of 590 days in space – it was his fourth mission.
However, he is not the oldest person to fly in orbit – this record belongs to John Glenn, who flew at 77 years on a mission from NASA in 1998. He died in 2016.
Petit and the two Russian cosmonauts will now spend a little time readjusting gravity.
After that, Pettit – who was born in Oregon on April 20, 1955 – will be transported by plane to Houston in Texas, while Ovchinin and Vagner will go to the main space training base in Russia in Zvyozdniy Gorodok (Star City) near Moscow.
Before their departure from the ISS, the crew gave command of the spaceship to the Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi.
