Thomas Pesquet has just returned to Earth and he must find his earthly senses, such as smell. “Me, I found that they smelled super good of detergent and soap, which probably also means that we did not smell very, very good.“, smiles the astronaut while speaking of the rescue team coming to seek him and his colleagues. Also, Thomas Pesquet tells how a first shower will not be such an ordinary experience:”In the station, as soon as you play with the water, it goes a little in all directions and there, to see all the water droplets that will fall in the same direction, it will be a bit like a movie. science fiction“, he sums up.
Weightlessness is over. Thus, for Thomas Pesquet everything weighs much heavier again, including small everyday objects. “Just lifting a phone, it feels like there’s really a rubber band pulling down, because that’s gravity, it’s a huge magnet“, describes the astronaut. From now on, Thomas Pesquet will combine medical tests with a fitness program.
Also, during his mission, despite his two hours of sport a day, Thomas Pesquet lost muscles and his bones are more fragile. “In space, we float all day long, there are a lot of muscles that we don’t use: the back muscles, the thigh muscles“, he specifies.
Finally, to sum up, we could say that Thomas Pesquet is getting old: “It is said that an astronaut has accelerated aging during his flight. There is a huge difference, it is that this aging is irreversible, with Thomas, it is reversible. This is the big difference“, explains Doctor Bernard Comet, doctor at the Institute of Space Medicine and Physiology. According to him, Thomas Pesquet will need a month to recover his muscular capacities during the effort. On the bone mineralization side, he will need between a and two years.
Thomas Pesquet will also carry out scientific experiments for several months to compare the data in space with those of his return to Earth.