It is an interview that has provoked many reactions on social networks.
In the news of 20 Hours of France 2 Sunday evening, the French astronaut Thomas Pesquet answered questions from Thomas Sotto concerning the Artemis 1 mission, the new NASA mission, whose takeoff scheduled for Monday, was postponed to Saturday.
In this interview, Thomas Pesquet did not hide his admiration for the Moon.
“When I look at the Moon at night, it still gives me a little shiver, because it's not the same thing to say to yourself is it humanly possible to go there.
The Moon, you have to see that there is a factor of 1000. It is 1000 times further than the Space Station.
There is yet another dimension to space travel,” he said in particular, before adding: “We are going to go very far.
As far as no human being has traveled from Earth.
“A sentence that ignited social networks, some seeing it as a” confession “that the human being has never set foot on the lunar soil.
🗣 "It is by going to the Moon that we will be in a position to go to Mars"
A few months after his return from the ISS, @Thom_astro is in the running to go to the Moon with the #Artémis mission.
▶️ #JT20H @ThomasSotto pic.twitter.com/727lUVdZCz
– Info France 2 (@infofrance2) August 28, 2022
However, the astronaut evoked the journey of the Artemis mission itself, which plans to circumnavigate the Moon, going up to 70,000 km further than the only permanent natural satellite of the Earth, before land there.
That is a further journey than that made by the Apollo missions.
In a series of tweets this Wednesday, the Frenchman made things clear, hammering that “of course yes, humans went to the moon during the Apollo missions”.
The latter also regretted that “some have fun blurring the truth”, and that others are fooled.
But why do we have to waste precious time on this again: of course yes, humans went to the moon during the Apollo missions.
And we're going back.
— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) August 31, 2022
“Seriously ask yourself the question: who wins in all this?
Not NASA no, but the manipulators who tell you that everything is false.
(…) And no, we're not going to demonstrate here that the moon landings did take place, because it's already been done MILLIONS of times, it's all over the web, and guys aren't listening anyway, they talk about the truth but choose things that suit them and ignore the rest”, he was again annoyed.