Longtime NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who has ventured to space four times, returned to Earth on Saturday night from the International Space Station. Pettit, who turned 70 on Sunday, landed at 9:20 p.m. ET in a Soyuz spacecraft with Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner near Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, after a seven-month stay aboard the orbiting laboratory.
The scientist invented the first object patented in space — called the Capillary Beverage, Space Cup or Zero-G cup, which makes it easier to drink beverages in the absence of gravity, and he is also a celebrated astrophotographer known for capturing unique views of the cosmos.
“One of the things I like to do with my astrophotography is to have a composition and a perspective that’s different than an Earth-centric one, typically showing an Earth horizon with the atmosphere on edge, the limb, and then some kind of astronomy, astrophotography, in relationship to that,” Pettit said from the space station during an April 3 interview with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Pettit said his photography is about the perspective of being in orbit.
“Earth is amazingly beautiful when your feet are firmly planted on the ground, and it’s beautiful from space,” Pettit said. “And it’s hard to say what is more beautiful. I think it’s because space is a unique opportunity we seek to focus on the beauty of being in orbit. If we had people living their whole life in orbit, when they come down to Earth, they would probably think that was the most beautiful perspective they’d ever seen.”
Pettit takes his photos from the cupola on the space station, a favorite of crew members due to its seven windows that overlook Earth.
Here are some of his most unforgettable views of what it’s like to live in space that he captured over the past seven months.
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