Thomas Pesquet returns to Earth: was his mission successful? – LCI

Two hundred days and almost as many scientific experiments. Here is in short, the assessment to be drawn from the passage of Thomas Pesquet aboard the International Space Station (ISS). This Monday and after six months in orbit, the French astronaut leaves the laboratory with his three fellow astronauts, heading for Earth.

During his stay in space, man will have accumulated almost all positions. From laboratory technician to commander-in-chief, without missing the almost daily handling of the station. For the scientific community, this is a successful mission.

It must be said that the engineer by training has not been idle. In six months, he carried out scientific experiments, not forgetting that of the blob shared with the 2,000 French schoolchildren. But he also fixed the failed CO2 filtration system, juggled the station’s orientation, kept in touch with engineers on the ground, and helped install solar panels outside the lab.

With his 4 spacewalks, the astronaut now holds, according to CNES, the European record for the longest time spent in a vacuum. Or 39h54m in total!

But Rémi Canton, project manager of the Alpha mission, prefers to qualify. Besides the intense work of the astronaut, “not all experiences are equal in duration and complexity, he explains. Thomas Pesquet does not arrive with his own program in the resort. The astronauts take turns and continue the ISS experiments that they sometimes did not even start themselves. ”

Because, as the project manager points out, “science is very long. Everyone participates in their continuum. “

The difference this time, continues Rémi Canton, “Is that, unlike the previous mission, there were more astronauts on board the ISS”. As a result, they could more easily multiply the experiences.

“The International Space Station has been around for over 20 years. So we are not going to discover a new organ, but some of these experiences allow concrete applications in our daily life. ” The scientist is thinking in particular of ultrasound scans piloted from Earth, which today are reminiscent of those carried out remotely in medical deserts.

“It was a pretty busy mission from start to finish. I had promised myself that I would take some time for myself and I didn’t. There, a week’s vacation, it looks like paradise ”, Thomas Pesquet admits with a smile to France Inter.

But barely returned, the astronaut could be called on another expedition, this time to the moon. The crew still remains to be done. “He is one of the three European astronauts who can actually claim it, continues Rémi Canton, like the Italian Luca Parmitano and the German Alexander Gerst. All three went on a mission to the ISS. They went on spacewalks and all three were station commanders. If Thomas hadn’t fulfilled one of these three aspects, he surely would have been late. But there he has his chances like the others. “