Prestwick hosts most experienced serving astronaut on his return to Earth

Aviation Editor Doug Maclean.

One of the multiple different users of Prestwick airport is NASA - America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Image - NASA

A flight with the callsign NASA 5 arrived at Prestwick after a flight of nearly 8 hours from Kazakhstan in the far east of Europe. On board was American astronaut Don Pettit.

The aircraft spent nearly 2 and a half hours on the ground at Prestwick to allow astronaut Pettit to refresh before carrying on with the next 9 and a half hour flight to Houston, Texas.

Doctor Pettit and 2 fellow astronauts landed from space at 5:20am on Easter Sunday morning. His landing in Kazakhstan was on his 70th birthday. He is the oldest serving astronaut but younger than John Glenn who was age 77 when he flew in the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998.

Don Pettit returned from 7 months on the International Space Station (ISS). ISS is used for a wide range of scientific research, including space-based observations of Earth, material science, and life sciences

It orbits 250 miles above Earth and has been continuously manned since November 2000.

ISS is a joint project of NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

Don Pettit launched from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome on September 11th last year.

Space is described as Dr Pettit’s “happy place”. He said “I come alive when I’m in space. I’m like a cowboy that wants to be on a horse. I’m an astronaut that needs to be sitting on a rocket and flying in space.”

Happy birthday Doctor Pettit. Welcome back to Earth and we hope you enjoyed your brief stopover in Scotland.

Pictures credits Flight Radar 24, Kai Brown and NASA.