April 19 NASA astronaut Don Pettit will return to Earth from the International Space Station on Saturday, along with two Russian cosmonaut colleagues.
Pettit, Alexey Ovchinin, and Ivan Vagner are scheduled to land outside the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, using a parachute at 9:20 p.m. EDT Saturday.
At 5:57 p.m. EDT, the trio will begin undocking their Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft from the ISS.
NASA will livestream the procedure on its website.
The landing, scheduled for 6:20 a.m. local time, will coincide with Pettit’s 70th birthday. He is the oldest active member of NASA’s astronaut corps.
During a ceremony Friday, Pettit handed over command of the ISS to Japan Aerospace Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi, marking the beginning of Expedition 73.
Last month, the uncrewed Cygnus spacecraft delivered more than 4 tons of supplies and cargo to the ISS.
By the end of their 220-day space mission, the three men will have orbited the Earth 3,520 times.
Pettit worked as a flight engineer aboard the ISS during Expeditions 71 and 72, and he has now completed four space flights totaling 590 days in orbit.
After their recovery, the trio will fly by helicopter to Karaganda, Kazakhstan, before splitting up: Ovchinin and Vagner will fly to Star City, Russia, while Pettit will fly to Houston on a NASA plane.