About Donald Pettit
Donald Roy Pettit is an American astronaut and chemical engineer best known for his orbital astrophotography and in-space inventions such as the Zero G Cup, which received the first ever patent for an object invented in space. He is a veteran of three long-duration missions aboard the International Space Station, one Space Shuttle mission, and a six-week expedition to find meteorites in Antarctica. As of 2026, at age 70, he is NASA's oldest active astronaut and the third oldest person to reach orbit, behind John Glenn and Larry Connor. He has accumulated 590 days in space. Pettit's first journey to space was as a flight engineer on Expedition 6, a long-duration mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). In his free time on ISS, Pettit created and filmed "Saturday Morning Science", a series of demonstrations exploring fluid behavior in microgravity. Pettit's first Soyuz landing proved challenging.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.