At a time when traveling is a privilege, he is undoubtedly the most envied French of all.
Four years after his first mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), astronaut Thomas Pesquet, 43, is preparing to spend another six months in orbit around the Earth.
After a postponement due to bad weather on Thursday, the Frenchman must take off this Friday, at 11:49 am (time in France), from Cape Canaveral, Florida (United States).
It will be six hours less on the east coast of the United States.
It is therefore after a sleepless night that the native of Rouen (Seine-Maritime) will settle in the vessel alongside his teammates, the Japanese Akihiko Hoshide and the Americans Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur.
For an ascent that echoes his personal trajectory.
VIDEO.
Thomas Pesquet at Cap Canaveral: "We are living the golden age of human spaceflight"
In just a few years, Thomas Pesquet has managed not only to give complete satisfaction to the European Space Agency (ESA) which recruited him in 2009, but also to arouse popular enthusiasm, to make an impression with his photos of the Earth and his sense of communication, especially with the youngest.
He is currently in 11th position in the ranking of favorite personalities of the French.
“One of its strengths is its authenticity.
He does not cheat, looks very frank and says things, comments Frédéric Dabi, director general of the French Institute of Public Opinion (Ifop).
He manages to combine two types of closeness with people, who identify with him for who he is and admire him for what he does.
"
Soon station commander
This esteem success would not have transformed him or made him deviate from his objectives:
not change.
He is lively, precise, always curious and then funny ”, affirms Laura André-Boyet, instructor of the European Astronaut Center (CAE), which trained him for his two missions.
“He is still extremely motivated.
He may take a little more perspective on this mission.
He has announced that he will try to take some more time for himself, remains to be seen if he will really do it!
"
Especially since inside his helmet, Thomas Pesquet will put on a new cap, becoming, in the second part of his stay, the station commander.
He will thus be the first French and the fourth European to occupy these positions.
Attributions that Thomas Pesquet explained modestly, when they were formalized in March by the ESA, having to "instead of France in manned flights".
When will he take orders?
In the fall, answers NASA, but "the exact date remains to be determined".
At the beginning of May, he will beat the time record for the presence of a Frenchman in space, held by Jean-Pierre Haigneré.
Total containment
The journey itself is of a new kind.
If this is the third time that the transport of humans to the ISS has been entrusted to SpaceX, this mission anchors it in the era of the reusable, dear to the founder of the American company, Elon Musk.
Thus, Thomas Pesquet takes place today in a Crew Dragon capsule which has already been sent into space in May 2020, for the mission inaugurating SpaceX manned flights.
The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket has also already been used.
A recycling of vehicles which, according to his statements on the subject, would not have prevented Thomas Pesquet from sleeping soundly.
Read alsoNasa chooses SpaceX to take astronauts to the Moon
During the twenty-four hour journey that will precede arrival at the resort, Thomas Pesquet should only perform the gestures repeated many times during his preparation at a minimum. NASA has decided that this American Crew Dragon should only be flown by its astronauts for the time being. The Frenchie, like his Japanese colleague, will therefore only intervene in the event of difficulties. In this role, "we don't have a button to push most of the time," he regretted at the ESA conference in March.
The spacecraft is expected to dock with the ISS at around 11:10 a.m. on Saturday.
Up there, the Frenchman will carry out a hundred experiments in a still limited time.
When he can, he will share some good little dishes concocted by Thierry Marx with the rest of the crew.
For five days, they will be 11 to populate the station, then seven, in a space house equivalent to a six-room apartment.
A living volume of precisely 388 m3, because in weightlessness, we also move vertically.
Unheard of luck to fly… Which will require Thomas Pesquet two sports sessions a day so as not to see his muscles melt.
If he is not worried about his physical form, he confided at his last press conference on Monday, to expect a mission mentally "more difficult" than the first, after months of land restrictions linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.
VIDEO.
From space, Thomas Pesquet will be able to pedal… in Paris
Apart from a probable spacewalk, it is indeed a total confinement, without exemption, which awaits him, after months of intensive training, far from his family.
“We know that astronauts are heroes, but not heroes as they are shown to us.
They often sacrifice their life, their health, for some their family, to improve human life on Earth, ”recalls Laura Entrevsez.
When Le Parisien Week-End asked him last week if his job has thwarted a child's project, Thomas Pesquet did not dwell on this “choice of couple”. “We never had so much time, nor the irrepressible desire to have it,” he confined himself to saying. The designer Marion Montaigne, who devoted a comic strip to her during her first mission, remembers, however, that Thomas Pesquet encouraged her to go there "franco" on the demands of the profession: "He wanted to show that it is not trivial. 'go to space. Astronauts are very proud, but they live it in their flesh. The man nourishes a dream which is certainly enough to motivate him: to leave one day for the Moon and for Mars.
