Another line on his resume. On Monday 4 October, Thomas Pesquet will become the first Frenchman to take command of the International Space Station (ISS). European Space Agency (ESA) astronauts will indeed take over Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide (JAXA) during the (symbolic) key handover ceremony for the spacecraft, which will be broadcast live on NASA channels on Monday evening.
43-year-old Toulousain, who will hold this position until the end of his orbital mission in November, is in charge of the other six crew members (three Americans, two Russians and one Japanese) currently still on the ISS.
What will he do concretely? His job has nothing to do with flying the plane, because the space station automatically flies 400 km above the earth and orientation maneuvers are carried out from the ground, Franck De Winne, head of ESA’s European Astronaut Center in Cologne (Germany) told AFP. .
Spaceship captain “start the day by holding a conference with the aviation director on the ground (located in Houston, Moscow, Munich and Tsukuba, Japan) to discuss the day’s schedule for 15 minutes”, said the Belgian astronaut, who was the first European to hold this position in 2009.”On the field the work of the astronauts is distributed, but it’s up to the captain to ensure that the whole team can do their job well, that everyone is functioning to the best of their ability. atmosphere “, he explained.
What if something goes wrong? The commander then has all the power to make decisions in an emergency, without waiting for instructions from the field. In the event of a fire, lack of pressure or detection of a toxic atmosphere – the three defined emergencies – it is up to him to ensure that crew lives are saved as a priority. Two spacecraft, the Space X’s Crew Dragon capsule and Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft, are permanently tethered to the ISS and can be used by astronauts to be in danger in case of danger.
Captain, “It’s like in a boat, there is only one master on board for God”, the Frenchman commented at a press conference in March before embarking on an orbit. “Obviously, a lot of things are decided in the control center. But if there’s one voice in the crew that matters, it’s the captain’s voice. “
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