Nasa’s oldest astronaut feels ‘30 years old again’ in space

Nasa’s oldest full-time astronaut is back home and doing well, a week after wrapping up a seven-month space mission

Astronaut Don Pettit boarding a Nasa airplane to take him to Houston (Nasa/Bill Ingalls)

Nasa’s oldest full-time astronaut Don Pettit has returned to Earth after a seven-month mission aboard the International Space Station, just days after celebrating his 70th birthday.

Speaking from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Pettit said returning to Earth has always been “a significant challenge” for his body.

In his first public remarks since touchdown, Pettit reported a surprising benefit of his time in space: weightlessness made him feel decades younger, with everyday aches and pains he typically experiences on Earth vanishing during his 220 days in orbit.

However, the landing in a Russian Soyuz capsule on the Kazakh steppes proved a less pleasant experience, with Pettit admitting to vomiting upon feeling the full force of gravity for the first time in months.

“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.

Pettit was carried to a medical tent shortly after he and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner landed in their Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft (Bill Ingalls/Nasa via AP)

“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.”