NASA's Oldest Astronaut Back to Earth on His 70th Birthday

Cake, gifts and a low-key family celebration may be how many senior citizens picture their 70th birthday.

- Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON:

But NASA's oldest serving astronaut Don Pettit became a septuagenarian while hurtling towards the Earth in a spacecraft to wrap up a seven-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

A Soyuz capsule carrying the American and two Russian cosmonauts landed in Kazakhstan on Sunday, the day of Pettit's milestone birthday.

"Today at 0420 Moscow time (0120 GMT), the Soyuz MS-26 landing craft with Alexei Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Donald (Don) Pettit aboard landed near the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan," Russia's space agency Roscosmos said.