A return of several hours, on the water and without a toilet. After six months of mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Thomas Pesquet and the three other members of the Crew-2 mission (the Japanese Akihiko Hoshide and the two Americans Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur) must land off the Florida (United States) Tuesday, November 9 at 4:33 a.m. PST. This return has been postponed several times, in particular because of the weather and strong winds in the landing area. The undocking of the SpaceX capsule from the International Space Station, initially scheduled for late Sunday afternoon, is now set for Monday evening.
The end of a great adventure: we are ready to return to Earth and reunite with our loved ones. I couldn’t have hoped for better teammates to go into space. I said it on the shooting range, I still firmly believe in it after 6 months together in a tin can! pic.twitter.com/fzqGbjWS5h
– Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) November 6, 2021
At 43, the French astronaut is completing his “Alpha” mission, his second in space. He arrived aboard the ISS with his teammates on April 24. Franceinfo provides an update on the six things to know about his return to Earth.
1He will not cross his successors because of the weather
The weather is very important for the return to Earth of the members of the Crew-2 mission. “The weather conditions must be good, because once the descent has started, nothing can stop the capsule. They can therefore wait up to 15 hours in orbit before receiving the order” to leave, recalls Didier Schmitt, responsible for strategy and coordination of the robotic and human exploration program at the European Space Agency (ESA), in The Parisian.
The meteorological conditions will also be closely scrutinized for the takeoff of Crew-3, the mission that will transport Thomas Pesquet’s successors to the ISS. Because the members of the Crew-2 mission must wait for those from Crew-3 to arrive aboard the Station before leaving. Initially scheduled for October 31, their take-off was postponed because of the weather, as explained by France Bleu. “There are imperatives to be respected for a launch and especially for a launch with humans on board”, said Philippe Henarejos, editor-in-chief of the magazine Sky & Space, at franceinfo on October 30. And even if all this takes place in Florida, in an American state known for its mild climate, in November, “the weather is more capricious this season.” NASA thus once again announced, Sunday, November 7, the postponement of this return en due to strong winds in the landing area.
2The landing, a first for him
During his previous “Proxima” mission, in 2016-2017, the Frenchman landed in the Kazakh steppes. The water landing will therefore be a first for Thomas Pesquet, who said at a press conference on Friday that he hoped that the water landing would be “a little softer on the water”, even if it risks “move around a bit.”
“We already have a little seasickness when we get back to Earth, so there, when we come back to sea, it could be even worse, but we’ll see.”, he added. For now, it is impossible to know where it will land with precision, since the arrival on Earth se will do in one of the seven zones planned in the Atlantic Ocean, specifies Nasa in a press release.
3Astronauts will no longer be able to use the toilet during the trip
Seasickness is not the only ordeal that awaits the astronaut and his colleagues. During their trip, they will not be able to use the toilet in the Dragon capsule, due to a leak problem. “It is of course not optimal, but we are prepared to handle it”, modestly commented Megan McArthur on Friday. Don’t panic, since“they always wear layers which are particularly useful for them during extra-vehicular outings”, explains Didier Schmitt to Parisian.
4The return to Earth, a journey of several hours
The return to Earth should take several hours. If Didier Schmitt, in The Parisian, reported a 15-hour wait in orbit, Thomas Pesquet, interviewed at the end of October by students from the Ahetze school in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, was more evasive: “From the moment you leave the Space Station, it takes six, seven, eight hours.”
But this trip depends on several factors, he said: “Trajectories, the path we take (…) And then, everything accelerates a little at the end, once we make the atmospheric reentry (…) the last 100 km of altitude , we do them in 15 minutes, maybe, and we go down very, very quickly (…) in all, it takes between six and eight hours. “
5Landing, like “a little car accident”
Asked by a student from the Ahetze school, the ISS captain details the sensations of the landing: “The landing itself (…) is a shock. It’s like a small car accident (…) it goes all over the place, it hits hard enough (…) but we are protected, we have seats that are made for that. We have our helmets that protect us. “
And these frictions are “so strong that it raises the temperature of the capsule to 1600 ° C”, he says. “It burns, it makes a ball of fire around. We have a heat shield, we are protected, but that is especially what is a little impressive. We are crushed by our weight. It moves in all directions, after we sees flames through the window. “
Then it’s when the parachute opens that everything starts again “all over the place”, “like in a salad basket”. “Once you’re under the parachute, it’s pretty quiet, remembers the astronaut. We descend quite slowly, at 9 meters per second, (…) it’s as if we were still falling three floors per second, but we are under a parachute and as we fall into the water, it’s okay. It’s a little soft (…) there is no explosion, no smoke “.
6An “intense” fitness program upon his return
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, European Space Agency Astronaut Corps Training Center. 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.
Tests that are essential, when we know that on his return in April 2017, Thomas Pesquet had taken a few centimeters, which he had lost again with the return to Earth and gravity, reported at the time Alain Maillet, responsible physiology experiments aboard the ISS, at the microphone of France Bleu. The astronaut had also lost muscle mass and suffered premature aging of the bones.
The return is approaching after 6 months in space pic.twitter.com/J2z7wFrVzH
– Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) October 22, 2021
A few months later, he returned to this experience, to The echoes. : “At first I struggled to speak because the jaw muscles have to relearn how to work with gravity, he then confided to Echoes. I also felt like I had rubber bands hanging from my arms. It was very hard to get them up. ”
Fortunately, these inconveniences did not last. As, “and that’s more of a shame”, “the first hyper-strong sensations of the return: the rediscovery of sounds and colors, the smell of leaves, the pleasure of taking a shower or eating dairy products”, he said on his return. “Up there, the yogurts, the butter, the milk, the cream I really missed. I’m not a Norman for nothing”.