CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Fresh from space, NASA’s oldest full-time astronaut said Monday that weightlessness made him feel many years younger, with on a regular basis aches and pains vanishing.
Don Pettit marked his seventieth birthday on April 20 by plunging through the atmosphere in a Russian Soyuz capsule to wrap up a seven-month mission on the International Space Station.
In his first public remarks since touchdown, Pettit said he threw up everywhere in the Kazak steppes upon touchdown, the results of feeling gravity for the primary time in 220 days.
Returning to Earth has all the time been “a major challenge” for his body, Pettit said from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“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, however, Pettit felt the many years melt away.
“It makes me feel like I’m 30 years old again,” said Pettit, an astronaut since 1996 who ventured to space 4 times. “All that form of stuff heals up since you’re sleeping, you’re just floating and your body, all these little aches and pains and all the things heal up.”
Mercury astronaut John Glenn was 77 when he returned to orbit on a brief shuttle flight in 1998. But he’d been gone from NASA for many years and was near wrapping up his Senate profession.
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 bit of kid inside,” focused on his astrophotography while on the space station, capturing auroras, comets and satellites streaking off in the gap.
He also conducted a slew of physics experiments in his spare time, like blowing and stacking bubbles, and forming an ideal ball of honey on a spoon with peanut butter, as a way to share the experience with others.
“I’ve got just a few more good years left,” Pettit said. “I could see getting one other flight or two in before I’m able to hang up my rocket nozzles.”
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Fresh from space, NASA’s oldest full-time astronaut said Monday that weightlessness made him feel many years younger, with on a regular basis aches and pains vanishing.
Don Pettit marked his seventieth birthday on April 20 by plunging through the atmosphere in a Russian Soyuz capsule to wrap up a seven-month mission on the International Space Station.
In his first public remarks since touchdown, Pettit said he threw up everywhere in the Kazak steppes upon touchdown, the results of feeling gravity for the primary time in 220 days.
Returning to Earth has all the time been “a major challenge” for his body, Pettit said from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“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, however, Pettit felt the many years melt away.
“It makes me feel like I’m 30 years old again,” said Pettit, an astronaut since 1996 who ventured to space 4 times. “All that form of stuff heals up since you’re sleeping, you’re just floating and your body, all these little aches and pains and all the things heal up.”
Mercury astronaut John Glenn was 77 when he returned to orbit on a brief shuttle flight in 1998. But he’d been gone from NASA for many years and was near wrapping up his Senate profession.
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 bit of kid inside,” focused on his astrophotography while on the space station, capturing auroras, comets and satellites streaking off in the gap.
He also conducted a slew of physics experiments in his spare time, like blowing and stacking bubbles, and forming an ideal ball of honey on a spoon with peanut butter, as a way to share the experience with others.
“I’ve got just a few more good years left,” Pettit said. “I could see getting one other flight or two in before I’m able to hang up my rocket nozzles.”
