Stunning Space Photography from Astronaut Don Pettit's 220-Day Orbital Mission

Don Pettit, NASA’s oldest active astronaut, returned to Earth on April 20, coinciding with his 70th birthday. This marked the conclusion of his fourth spaceflight, totaling 220 eventful days aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

During his time on the ISS, Pettit engaged in scientific experiments, communicated with students, and dedicated hours to exercise routines to maintain his health and prevent bone density loss. However, his most remarkable contribution in orbit was his photography.

Since most people will never venture into space, Pettit aimed to offer a glimpse of this extraordinary environment through his images. He noted that avid photographers always want a camera in hand. "I could simply look out the window and enjoy the view," he said, "but when I do, I often find myself spotting meteors, flashes, or volcanic eruptions—and then scrambling to find my camera to capture the moment."

At times, he mounted up to five cameras simultaneously in the station’s cupola module, which features seven windows providing panoramic views of Earth and space.

Space photography often resembles nighttime photography, where stars appear faint and require long exposures to gather enough light. However, in orbit, nothing remains still: the ISS travels around Earth at approximately eight kilometers per second, while Earth itself rotates beneath.

Pettit occasionally leveraged this motion to create striking artistic effects, with city lights below streaking into bright lines and stars above tracing graceful arcs across the sky.

Describing his work on social media, Pettit called it a blend of science and art. "There’s plenty of technical fascination, or you can just sit back and think, ‘How amazing is this?’"

He also used a homemade orbital star tracker, a device he brought from Earth that slowly rotated to counteract the station's movement, allowing his camera to remain fixed on a specific point in the sky.

This tracker enabled him to capture a crystal-clear 10-second exposure of the Milky Way above a cloudy Pacific Ocean just before dawn. The blue-purple glow visible in the image results from sunlight scattering in Earth’s atmospheric nitrogen.

The star tracker also helped Pettit photograph the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds—two dwarf galaxies visible through the window of a docked SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. These galaxies are among the closest cosmic neighbors to our Milky Way.

In April, Pettit recorded a video showcasing the ethereal rhythmic pulsations of auroras, the luminous displays caused when atmospheric molecules are struck by high-energy particles from the sun.

Not all colorful lights captured were natural phenomena. For instance, green stripes appearing similar to auroras were actually lights from fishing vessels off the coast of Thailand, used to attract squid.

Pointing his camera toward Earth, Pettit filmed lightning flashes in the upper atmosphere above the Amazon basin in South America. By extending the video duration from roughly six seconds to 33 seconds, he revealed intricate structures within the lightning.

From orbit, the Betsiboka River in Madagascar reminded Pettit of the blood vessels in an eye.

At night, metropolitan areas glow brightly, as do wildfires, illuminating Earth’s surface.

Pettit also took advantage of opportunities to photograph spacecraft movements related to Earth, including a SpaceX Starship test rocket launch from Texas last November...

...and the docking of a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship with the ISS in December.

When off duty, Pettit devised entertaining scientific experiments unique to the space environment. One showed electrically charged water droplets dancing around a Teflon knitting needle. "I want to perform activities in space that can only be done in space," he said, adding that he planned to catch up on television once back on Earth.

In another experiment, he injected food coloring into a water sphere, creating a globule reminiscent of the planet Jupiter or a beautiful marble.

He also dissolved an antacid tablet inside a water sphere, observing how bubble patterns differ in microgravity since there is no buoyancy to make bubbles rise and escape easily.

Pettit froze thin wafers of water ice at minus 60 degrees Celsius. "What would you do with a freezer like this in space?" he wrote online. "I decided to make thin ice wafers simply because I’m in space and can do it."

Using polarizing filters to photograph these ice wafers revealed intricate crystalline patterns.

While Pettit is NASA’s oldest active astronaut, he is not the oldest person to orbit Earth. John Glenn, the first American to orbit in 1962, returned to space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998 at age 77.

Nor is Pettit the oldest to spend time on the ISS. Private astronaut Larry Connor was 72 when he spent two weeks aboard the station in 2022 as part of a mission operated by Axiom Space.

“I’m only 70, so I still have a few good years left,” Pettit said during a press briefing. “I could see myself flying one or two more missions before I’m ready to hang up my rocket thrusters.”