The time for the great departure has come.

After six months in orbit, Frenchman Thomas Pesquet and three other astronauts left the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday, beginning their journey back to Earth aboard a SpaceX spacecraft, which is due to land overnight off the coast of Florida.

The 43-year-old astronaut spent some 200 days in orbit on his second space mission.

He arrived aboard the ISS with his teammates on April 24.

"A pride to have represented France once again in space!", Tweeted a few hours before departure the one who, through his abundant publications on social networks, offered millions of people a taste of life weightless.

“Next time, the Moon?” He said.

A pride to have represented France once again in space!

Next time, the Moon?

Finally, we have to get back to Earth first, and then… a little rest. # MissionAlpha pic.twitter.com/YYjnY5FxLv

- Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) November 8, 2021

Many stages

Thomas Pesquet returns with the other members of the Crew-2 mission: the Japanese Akihiko Hoshide and the Americans Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur. 

On board Elon Musk's company ship are also 240 kg of scientific equipment and experiments.

The journey to Earth is done in several stages.

The undocking of the Dragon capsule took place on time at 19:05 GMT.

She must first tour the Space Station for about an hour and a half in order to photograph it from the outside.

On the live video broadcast from NASA, Thomas Pesquet, having removed his suit, could be seen taking these photos through a window of the capsule.

Then the ship will begin its return journey itself.

After a vertiginous descent, slowed down by its entry into the atmosphere and then by huge parachutes, it will land off Florida at 3.33 a.m. GMT on Tuesday, at dawn in France.

The landing, which promises to be intense, is a first for the French astronaut.

During his previous mission in 2016-2017, he landed in the Kazakh steppes with a Russian Soyuz.

Once the capsule has "hit" the surface of the sea ("splashdown" in English), it will float and the crew will be recovered as quickly as possible by ships positioned nearby.

A helicopter will bring the astronauts back to dry land, from where they will board a plane to the NASA Space Center in Houston, Texas.

Thomas Pesquet will undergo quick medical tests there before flying to Cologne, Germany, where the European Astronaut Center is located.

Effects on the human body

For three weeks, it will then be subjected to a battery of scientific tests, intended to observe the effect of a long stay in orbit on the human body.

This will not prevent him from seeing his relatives.

Then the astronaut will finally take a little vacation.

Crew-2 is the second regular mission carried out by SpaceX on behalf of NASA.

The company allowed the space agency to resume flights from American soil, after the shutdown of the space shuttles in 2011.

The crew of Crew-2 returns to Earth before the arrival on board the ISS of their replacements, four astronauts from Crew-3, whose take-off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has been repeatedly delayed, especially because of the weather. 

It will finally take place on Wednesday at 9:03 p.m. local time (2:03 a.m. GMT Thursday) from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. 

In the meantime, the Space Station will not be uninhabited: two Russians and an American remain on board. 

With AFP

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