NASA’s oldest astronaut felt the decades melt away | Lifestyle News

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Fresh from space, NASA’s oldest full-time astronaut mentioned Monday that weightlessness made him really feel decades youthful, with on a regular basis aches and pains vanishing.

Don Pettit marked his seventieth birthday on April 20 by plunging by way of the ambiance in a Russian Soyuz capsule to wrap up a seven-month mission at the International Space Station.

In his first public remarks since landing, Pettit mentioned he threw up throughout the Kazak steppes upon landing, the consequence of feeling gravity for the first time in 220 days.

Returning to Earth has all the time been “a significant challenge” for his physique, Pettit mentioned from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“I didn’t look too good because I didn’t feel too good,” he mentioned, including that his physique’s regular “creaks and groans” returned.

In weightlessness, on the different hand, Pettit felt the decades melt away.

“It makes me feel like I’m 30 years old again,” mentioned Pettit, an astronaut since 1996 who ventured to space 4 occasions. “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 profession.

Even a pair of 90-year-olds have flown to space, however solely on 10-minute up-and-down hops by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company.

Pettit, an engineer who nonetheless feels “like a little kid inside,” targeted on his astrophotography whereas at the space station, capturing auroras, comets and satellites streaking off in the distance.

He additionally carried out a slew of physics experiments in his spare time, like blowing and stacking bubbles, and forming a excellent ball of honey on a spoon with peanut butter, to be able to share the expertise with others.

“I’ve got a few more good years left,” Pettit mentioned. “I could see getting another flight or two in before I’m ready to hang up my rocket nozzles.”