He will (finally) come back down to Earth. Frenchman Thomas Pesquet and the three other members of the Crew-2 crew will leave the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday, and land off Florida “no earlier” than Monday at 12:14 GMT (2:14 p.m. in Paris), after spending more than six months in space, 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.
“A bittersweet feeling”
“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, 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.
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.