Scientific Asia:On Wednesday, an astronaut and ardent photographer made their fourth space mission. Don Pettit, a NASA astronaut, visited the International Space Station for the first time as part of Expedition 6 in November 2003 and returned on July 1, 2012, after his most recent visit.
On September 11, Pettit, together with fellow cosmonaut Ivan Vagner and Soyuz commander Alexey Ovchinin, set out for the International Space Station (ISS) on the Soyuz MS-26 mission. This was the start of Vagner’s second flight and Ovchinin’s fourth.
The launch took place at 9:23 p.m. MSK (12:23 p.m. EDT, 1623 UTC) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
On August 16, during prelaunch interviews, Pettit referred to space travel as his “home away from home.”
Every time you travel into space, something new happens. Since your last visit, things have changed, Pettit stated. “I’m an astronaut who needs to be sitting on a rocket and flying in space, just like a cowboy who wants to be out on a horse in the range.”
The space station is now in orbit and will shortly make the switch from Expedition 71 to Expedition 72. With the departure of Soyuz MS-25 and its crew—Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, and Tracy Dyson—that will become official.
Pettit is the one who spearheaded the design of the mission patch that would serve as a symbol of Expedition 72. He claimed that the simplicity of the Expedition 1 patch served as inspiration for the upcoming design.
Every time you travel into space, something new happens. Since your last visit, things have changed, Pettit stated. “I’m an astronaut who needs to be sitting on a rocket and flying in space, just like a cowboy who wants to be out on a horse in the range.”
The space station is now in orbit and will shortly make the switch from Expedition 71 to Expedition 72. With the departure of Soyuz MS-25 and its crew—Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, and Tracy Dyson—that will become official.
Pettit is the one who spearheaded the design of the mission patch that would serve as a symbol of Expedition 72. He claimed that the simplicity of the Expedition 1 patch served as inspiration for the upcoming design.
Referring to the recently launched Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft, Pettit remarked, “I’ve actually talked NASA into flying several new lenses, highly optimized for nighttime imagery and they just arrived on station with NG-21.” “I’m excited to use these lenses that are optimized for nighttime photography.”
2012 also saw Pettit capture the one-millionth image taken on the International Space Station. He stated that his goal upon his return was to capture “interesting phenomena” rather than score points.
“STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement), an atmospheric phenomenon typically associated with the aurora, is one phenomenon that has recently occurred that I want to see if I can capture.”
Pettit clarified. “I’ve reviewed my photos from Expeditions 30 and 31 to see if I accidentally got a picture of Steve. afterward, I haven’t seen any STEVE imagery from my mission or missions, so I’m hoping to see if I can get a close-up look at the STEVE phenomenon.
Pettit is set to return to an ISS that has undergone over ten years of development. As a fellow traveler who had also been away from the International Space Station (ISS) for more than ten years, he said he went to NASA astronauts Mike Barratt and Tracy Dyson for their advice.
“I was taken aback by their response. They reported that the station is more orderly and clean and that the software tools we have for inventory management, stowage, and even running our operations on time are far more effective than what we had in the past, according to Pettit.
“They were impressed by how much more efficiently things were running on the space station now than they were ten, twelve, and in some cases fourteen years ago.”
Pettit has been very busy with tasks in the astronaut office during his time off between missions. He has worked as a technical astronaut on NASA’s Gateway program and SpaceX’s Human Landing System version of the Starship rocket.
However, he asserted that nothing can replace the feeling of returning to space on one’s own.
“There’s just a certain aspect of going into space that just resonates on a fundamental level with my soul,” Pettit remarked. “I am thrilled to have another chance to travel into space and feel incredibly fortunate.”
Pettit said, “No, I like to say, this is my next spaceflight,” in response to the question of whether this would be his final space mission.
History created
A new world record was broken with the launch of the Soyuz MS-26 mission and its arrival in orbit. 19 people were orbiting the Earth at the same time for the first time, surpassing the previous record of 17 established in May 2023.
Nine people are on board the space station in addition to Pettit and his two cosmonaut crewmates. Four astronauts are inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience for the Polaris Dawn mission, while three Chinese taikonauts are on board the Tiangong space station.
The album was released just as the four members of Polaris Dawn were getting ready for the first spacewalk without the participation of a national government agency, such as NASA or Roscosmos.
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