Paris (AFP)

Only nine months before his "season 2". French astronaut and space star Thomas Pesquet is fully prepared for his new adventure on the International Space Station (ISS) and "very excited" to take off this time with an American spacecraft.

Mission name: Alpha. Duration: six months. Planned take-off: late March 2021, from Cape Canaveral in Florida, with three other crew members. Boarding: aboard Space X's new Crew Dragon capsule.

"I will have the chance to be the first European to fly on this vehicle. It's new, it's modern ... we are very enthusiastic!", Told AFP the astronaut of the Agency. Space Center (ESA), by phone from the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, where he trains.

Three years ago, for his first "Proxima" mission, the youngest member of the European Astronaut Corps flew to the ISS with a Russian Soyuz rocket, from the Baikonur cosmodrome, like all the residents of the Station since 2011.

A Russian monopoly that ended the first manned flight of Space X's private capsule, launched in May to the ISS with two NASA astronauts. "We are going to reuse the same capsule as the one currently on board the Station, it's new! It's funny to go into space with the same vehicle but not at the same time", rejoices the astronaut.

At Elon Musk's company in California, he has already been able to test the Crew Dragon simulators in a futuristic cockpit, with its 100% touchscreen tablets. "You have to change your habits ... but we are here to adapt!" comments the engineer and airline pilot.

At Space X, "everything is in the same place, the control center, the people who build the rocket .... Questions can be answered immediately," he appreciates.

- "Tell another story" -

Unlike Soyuz, an “old but reliable system that pulled like clockwork”, this new technology in development involves a “more uncertain” flight schedule, which “forced us to speed up the rest of the training, stalled. over a year instead of two and a half ".

The Covid-19 crisis has also turned the schedule upside down, and travel is reduced - his training in Japan will only take place virtually.

On board the "Dragon", the 42-year-old astronaut will fly with his American counterparts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, as well as the Japanese Haki Kohoshide. All veterans, like him.

On the ISS, they will join the Russians. "I'm going to end up with three or four people with whom I have already flown ... It's a bit of season 2, with the same characters".

"But, like in a series on Netflix, you have to tell a different story." But the ISS, which will celebrate 20 years of human presence in space, may "lack novelty", he concedes.

"We are somewhat victims of our success, the fact of having successfully completed this program in a safe way, with scientific results in the long term ... There is no longer really any suspense, and in an environment where we have the habit of zapping, very quickly we are no longer on the front of the stage ".

Whatever, because "we are here to do science", he recalls, and the ISS "still has a future". "We have clearly not gone around the research. It is first a necessary step to prepare future missions to Mars or the Moon", for which he is a candidate - "like all my colleagues".

- "Alpha" or "excellence" -

"And then the ISS is a laboratory giving access to scientific phenomena inaccessible on Earth because of gravity", argues Thomas Pesquet, who will embark brain stem cells in orbit, to study their accelerated aging in the 'space.

If he has time after his long working days, he wishes to continue "to talk about the environment" to the public, as he had done during his first stay by sharing his photos of the Earth seen from up there, via social networks. “But I'm not going to open a Tik Tok account!” He certifies.

Why "Alpha"? The name, selected during a competition, refers to Alpha Centauri, the star system closest to Earth, in the extension of "Proxima", the star of the same constellation. "Where the first exoplanets are found, those that we will look for when technology allows it".

"It is also the first letter of the Greek alphabet, the symbol of the excellence we are aiming for," he concludes.

© 2020 AFP