September 11, 2024

— NASA's oldest active astronaut and two veteran Russian cosmonauts have left Earth for a six-month stay on board the International Space Station (ISS).

Don Pettit, who turned 69 in April, lifted off with Aleksey Ovchinin, 52, and Ivan Vagner, 39, on board Roscosmos' Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft on Wednesday (Sept. 11). Riding atop a Soyuz 2.1a rocket from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the three crewmates launched at 12:23 p.m. EDT (1623 GMT or 9:23 p.m. local time).

"People have asked me if this is my last flight, and I tell them, 'No, this is my next flight,' said Pettit in an interview with collectSPACE. "I would love to spend as much time as possible in space, either on a space station platform orbiting Earth or going elsewhere."

The Soyuz is scheduled to dock to the station's Rassvet mini-research module at about 3:33 p.m. EDT (1933 GMT) after circling Earth twice. At the ISS, Pettit, Ovchinin and Vagner will join the Expedition 71 crew led by Oleg Kononenko with cosmonauts Nikolai Chub and Alexander Grebenkin of Roscosmos and NASA astronauts Tracy Dyson, Matt Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.

Update: Soyuz MS-26 autonomously docked at 3:32 p.m. EDT (1932 GMT).

Soyuz MS-26 launch to space station. Click to enlarge video in new pop-up window. (NASA)

About a week later, Kononenko, Chub and Dyson will return to Earth on Soyuz MS-25, followed by SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft "Freedom" arriving with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Dominick, Barratt, Epps and Grebenkin will then depart for Earth on Dragon "Endeavour," leaving Pettit, Ovchinin, Vagner, Hague, Gorbunov, Wilmore and Williams to form Expedition 72 on the station.

During their stay through the spring of 2025, Pettit, Ovchinin and Vagner will see the arrival and departure of visiting resupply vehicles, help maintain the space station's systems and conduct hundreds of science experiments and technology demonstrations. During his prior time on the orbiting laboratory, Pettit became known for conducting what he dubbed "Saturday Morning Science," using his free time to explore investigations of his own choosing.

One of those projects led to Pettit becoming the first person to receive a patent for an object he invented while in space.

"Of course we are going to [again] be using the zero-g space cup, particularly for events that you would normally have a celebration," Pettit told collectSPACE, referring to his drinkware, which uses capillary channel flow to direct the liquid to its spout. "It's nice to have a bit of a celebration with tea or coffee, and we can put them in the zero-g cups and drink in a manner that civilization is used to in terms of celebrating with a cup on the ground."

The launch of Soyuz MS-26 marks Pettit's third long-duration mission on the ISS. He earlier served as a flight engineer on Expedition 6 in 2002 and Expedition 30/31 in 2012. Before this flight, he had already logged more than a year in space.

Prior to Pettit launching on Wednesday, the oldest active NASA astronaut to fly into space was Story Musgrave, who was 61 when he lifted off on his sixth and final shuttle flight, STS-80, in 1996. The oldest person to visit the ISS (to date) was private astronaut Larry Connor, who at 74 was the pilot aboard Axiom Space's first mission in 2022.

Ovchinin, as commander of Soyuz MS-26, chose this flight's call sign, "Burlak" (a barge puller, as visually represented on the crew's mission patch), and its "zero-g indicator," a plush pink corgi that reminded him of his pet dog "Peach."

Ovchinin is also on his third mission. He previously was a flight engineer on the station's 47th, 48th and 59th crews and commanded Expedition 60. He has spent 374 days off the planet leading up to his current flight.

Vagner has only flown once before, serving as an Expedition 62/63 flight engineer. His first spaceflight lasted 196 days.

With Wednesday's launch, there was a record 19 people orbiting Earth, including the three aboard Soyuz MS-26, the nine aboard ISS, three taikonauts on China's Tiangong space station and four private astronauts aboard SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission.

Soyuz MS-26 is Russia's 72nd Soyuz to launch for the International Space Station since 2000 and 155th to fly since 1967.