New Delhi, April 20 -- For NASA's oldest serving astronaut Don Pettit, his 70th birthday was not about spending quietly with family and friends, cutting a cake, blowing out candles or any other traditional feat.

Instead, Don Pettit turned 70 in space, while hurtling towards the Earth in a spacecraft as he wrapped up a mission aboard the International Space Station.

A Soyuz capsule carrying the American and two Russian cosmonauts landed in Kazakhstan on Sunday, as Pettit celebrated his milestone birthday with a bang.

"Today at 0420 Moscow time (0120 GMT), the Soyuz MS-26 landing craft with Alexei Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Donald (Don) Pettit aboard landed near the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan," a statement from Russia's space agency Roscos...