The 365 Days of Astronomy Cosmic Perspective - Don Pettit Interview
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Mar 26, 2026 Don Pettit, veteran NASA astronaut with 590+ days in space and inventor of the Zero-G Cup, shares vivid stories from long-duration missions. He talks neutral-buoyancy training, suit comfort and reentry extremes. Hear about fluid and particle experiments, novel photography techniques from orbit, and preparations and challenges for Artemis II.
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Relearning Balance After Long Microgravity Stays
- Returning to Earth requires retraining vestibular and small postural muscles that atrophied in microgravity, so balance and posture recovery take weeks.
- Pettit explains the otolith sac stops providing useful up/down cues in microgravity and tiny back muscles take a six-to-seven month vacation.
Ballistic Soyuz Return After Columbia Grounding
- Pettit and Ken Bowersox returned to Earth in Soyuz TMA-1 after the Columbia loss, experiencing a ballistic entry with yaw misalignment and over eight Gs.
- The upgraded Soyuz cockpit serial 001 had a reaction control fault causing 75 degrees yaw and an automated downmode to ballistic entry that landed them 475 km short.
Inventing The Zero G Cup With Capillary Geometry
- Pettit invented the Zero G Cup using capillary-driven channel flow to let astronauts sip from an open container in microgravity.
- He folded Mylar into a geometry that parks fluid near the lip and uses capillary forces to refill the rim so you can smell and sip coffee in space.