Space: Thomas Pesquet and three other astronauts back on Earth Monday at 1:14 p.m. – LCI

After six months in orbit, the four astronauts of the Crew-2 mission are due to return to Earth in November. While the timing remains uncertain for now, due to weather conditions, Thomas Pesquet and three other astronauts will leave the International Space Station on Sunday, November 7 before landing on Monday at 1:14 p.m. (12:14 GMT), NASA announced on Friday. .

The crew of Crew-2, made up of Thomas Pesquet, the Japanese Akihiko Hoshide and the Americans Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, will thus return to Earth before the arrival on board the ISS of the four astronauts of Crew-3, including the take-off was delayed several times, in particular because of the weather. “As we prepare to leave there is a bit of a bittersweet feeling”, Thomas Pesquet said earlier Friday at a press conference from the space station. “We might never come back to see the ISS again, and it truly is a magical place.”

The 43-year-old French astronaut is completing the second mission of his career in orbit, “Alpha”. He arrived aboard the ISS with his teammates on April 24. During his previous “Proxima” mission, in 2016-2017, he landed in the Kazakh steppes. The landing will therefore be a first for him.

It should “be a little gentler on the water”, said Thomas Pesquet. “Then what can happen is that things move a bit.” And the Frenchman added: “We are already a bit seasick when we get back on land, so here when we get back to sea it may be even worse, but we’ll see.”

After its vertiginous descent, the Dragon capsule will be recovered from one of the possible arrival points, off Florida, by a SpaceX boat. Crew-2 is the second regular mission carried out by Elon Musk’s company on behalf of Nasa. The takeoff of the third is finally scheduled for Wednesday at 9:03 p.m. Florida time (2:03 GMT Thursday), aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral. Crew-3 astronauts Americans Raja Chari, Kayla Barron and Tom Marshburn, as well as German Matthias Maurer, have been in quarantine at the Kennedy Space Center for days.

The space agency envisages that the Crew-2 capsule makes, before starting its descent towards the Earth, the tour of the space station, in order to photograph the outside. An unexpected challenge then awaits the four astronauts on their journey: they will not be able to use the toilets of the Dragon capsule, a leak problem having been discovered. “It is of course not optimal, but we are prepared to handle it”, modestly commented Megan McArthur on Friday.

After his return to Earth and some tests to check his state of health in Florida, Thomas Pesquet will be very quickly transported to Cologne, Germany, where the European Astronaut Center is located. He will follow there “for three weeks an intense fitness program”, and will be subjected to the same tests as before and during its stay in zero gravity, in order to contribute to the collection of scientific data on the effect of a long stay in orbit on the human body. “And then I hope, first week of vacation for many months”, he stressed on Friday. “I even feel like it’s been years.” Looking back over the past six months, he called the mission “very, very intense”.