Thomas Pesquet’s return to Earth postponed, he will leave the ISS on Monday – The HuffPost

Joe Skipper via Reuters

SPACE – Thomas Pesquet is playing extra time. The French astronaut and his crew Crew-2, aboard the International space station since the end of April, will not finally leave theISS Monday, November 8, when their departure was initially scheduled this Sunday for a return to Earth Monday morning around 7 a.m. Florida time.

“Due to strong winds in the landing area, the return to Earth of Crew-2 whose Thomas Pesquet is one of the members, is now scheduled for Tuesday, November 9 around 4:33 a.m. [heure de Paris] said the European Space Agency (ESA), citing NASA, on Twitter. Undocking is scheduled for Monday 8 November at 8:05 pm ”.

Thomas Pesquet, 43, 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 smoother on the water,” said Thomas Pesquet. “Then what can happen is that things move a bit.” “We already have a little seasickness when we come back to land, so when we come back to sea it could be even worse, but we’ll see,” he added.

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. She had to return to Earth before the arrival on board the ISS of the four astronauts from Crew-3, whose take-off was itself several times delayed in particular, already, because of the weather. Postponements which had precisely postponed the return of Thomas Pesquet and his teammates.

See also on The HuffPost: Thomas Pesquet gives a tour of the ISS before his return to Earth