The Frenchman Thomas Pesquet and three other astronauts are scheduled to leave the International Space Station on Sunday to land off Florida “Not early” Like on Monday at 12:14 p.m. GMT. The stay may be extended by more than a day, SpaceX announced on SundayThe end date is now set “As quickly as possible” It’s Monday, 8:05 p.m. French time. This means that a subsidence can be expected on the Florida coast after eight hours.
Otherwise the program remains unchanged. The Crew 2 crew, consisting of Thomas Pesquet, Japanese Akihiko Hoshide, and Americans Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, will return to Earth before the four Crew 3 astronauts board the International Space Station, including the flight. – The closure has been delayed several times, mainly due to the weather. “While we are preparing to leave, we feel a certain bitterness”, That said Thomas Pesquet at a press conference of the space station on Friday. “We may never see the International Space Station again, and it really is a lovely place.”
It should be softer on the water.
The 43-year-old French astronaut is completing the second mission of his career to orbit, “Alpha”. He and his colleagues arrived aboard the International Space Station on April 24th. During his previous mission “Proxima”, he landed in the Kazakh steppe in 2016-2017. So the landing will be the first for him. Should “Be a little gentler on the water”, said Thomas Bisquet. “Then it can happen that things move a little.” “We’ll get a little seasick when we go back ashore, so it may be worse when we go back to sea, but we’ll see.” he added.
After its rotating descent, the Dragon capsule is recovered by a SpaceX boat from one of the potential access points off Florida. Crew-2 is Elon Musk’s second regular mission on behalf of NASA. The third flight is due to take off on Wednesday at 9:03 p.m. Florida time (2:03 GMT Thursday) aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral.
The American astronauts of Crew 3 Raja Chari, Kayla Barron and Tom Marshburne as well as the German Matthias Maurer have been in quarantine in the Kennedy Space Center for several days. The space agency plans that the Crew-2 capsule, before it begins its descent to Earth, visit the space station to take photos of the outside.
There are no toilets in the return capsule
Then an unexpected challenge awaits the four astronauts on their journey: They cannot use the Dragon capsule’s toilets because a leak problem has been discovered. “Of course this is not optimal, but we are ready to manage it”, Meghan MacArthur made modest statements on Friday.
After returning to Earth and doing some tests to check his health in Florida, Thomas Pesquet is flown very quickly to Cologne, where the European Astronaut Center is located. will follow there Three-week intensive fitness program It will undergo the same tests as before and during its stay in weightlessness to help collect scientific data on the effects of long stays in orbit on the human body. “And then I hope the first week of vacation for several months, He said on Friday. I even feel like years have passed. “
Looking back over the past six months, call the mission “Very, very strict.” Thomas Pesquet made four EVA trips outside the station, mostly to install new solar panels. This leads him to a total of six missions that he completed during his first mission in Proxima.
When asked about the moments he will remember, he quoted “More than 200 experiences” On board, but also a meeting with actress Yulia Peresild, director Klim Chebenko, Russians who came for 12 days to shoot the first film in history in space. “At the beginning we didn’t really know how to position ourselves, He said. But we had to talk to them and it worked out fine. We can’t wait to see the result. “ Pesquet is one of eleven French people who have been in space: ten men and a cat.
To update : Article was republished on Sunday, November 7th at 1pm when the launch delay was announced.
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