How will Thomas Pesquet spend his days in orbit?

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20 minutes

  • Thomas Pesquet will return to the International Space Station on April 22 for six months.

  • Its mission, code name Alpha: Contribute to a hundred international scientific experiments.

  • Among them, a dozen will be supervised from Cnes in Toulouse.

    Sharp, zen or educational, "20 Minutes" presents a sample.

If you think he's going to be spending his time watching the sun go down sixteen times a day or taking incredible photos after a saxophone break, you're light years from reality.

When Thomas Pesquet takes off, with his captain's spacesuit this time, on April 22 for his second stay on the International Space Station (ISS), it is with the heavy task of continuing, initiating or executing a hundred scientific experiments. developed by space agencies.

Among these experiences, twelve were specifically concocted by Cnes.

They will be piloted and supervised from Toulouse by engineers from Cadmos *.

Technological, sometimes fun and educational, they have the particularity of being "very pragmatic" and of looking even further.

“Clearly, we are really looking to return to the Moon and then to March,” emphasizes Sébastien Barde, Deputy Director of Sciences and Exploration at Cnes.

And there is a whole series of points that must be resolved ”.

Here is an anthology of experiences that could contribute to it.

The most "exotic" experience

Two hours of sport a day.

This is the price for an ISS astronaut, in order to avoid the loss of his muscle mass and the weakening of his bones.

Not really the prison but Thomas Pesquet retains a certain monotony, planted on his space bike of apartment.

The Immersive Exercise experience is therefore to boost his morale, and that of other space travelers after him.

By bringing him back to Earth two hours a day.

Thanks to a cadence sensor on his shoes and, above all real videos shot at 360 ° and projected in a virtual reality headset, the astronaut will make his daily trip… to Paris.

“We already had routes ready but we recorded one for him: It is 13 km between the Eiffel Tower, the Trocadéro and the Banks of the Seine,” says Dimitri Prikhodko, founder of Fit Immersion.

And, we tested, the loafers will push themselves as if by magic in its path.

The most magical (and anti-Covid)

It is the “barrier gesture experience” par excellence, jokes Rémi Canton, head of the Alpha project at Cadmos.

It consists of moving objects, very small anyway, without ever touching them.

With Télémaque, Thomas Pesquet will take in his luggage what looks like an enormous chrome shower head.

It is in fact “an acoustic gripper” which creates a vortex of sound waves pushing objects to get trapped in a bubble of silence.

On Earth, Telemachus moves little more than a polystyrene ball.

Up there, the astronaut will move plastic balls without contact.

In medicine, the acoustic clamp could help move kidney stones or the targeted delivery of biotech drugs into the body.

The funniest, thanks to the blob

We no longer present the blob, this sticky and stringy unicellular organism, hero of Audrey Dussutour's laboratory in Toulouse.

The CNRS researcher set aside 2,000 blobs for as many classes, and four for Thomas Pesquet.

The objective will be for him to observe for a week the behavior of the blob in weightlessness, while the students will scrutinize theirs.

A funny experience.

More for the blob that Thomas Pesquet will drink with oatmeal than for the one whose mission is to starve.

"It will turn a little then surely go back to dormancy," predicts Audrey Dussutour.

The icing on the cake

Packaging is a plague on the ISS.

In particular the shockproof foams, petro-sourced, fireproof kits which are used to supply the station with equipment.

With the Eco Pack experience, Cnes will test reusable protective materials.

First of all, walls made of recyclable sheets, 3D printed, honeycombed, based on polyesters produced by bacterial fermentation.

They can then be used as seedlings or remelted at will.

But the experience goes even further with the ultimate recycling: soft walls in madeleine, gingerbread or breads of Genoa.

These cakes, whose recipes have barely been touched up by houses like Pillon, Hénaff or Darnis, and guaranteed to be crumb-free, pave the way for non-freeze-dried meals.

Thomas Pesquet has not yet tasted but his taste preferences have been taken into account.

* Center for the development of microgravity activities and space operations

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  • Toulouse

  • Science

  • Cones

  • ISS

  • Thomas Pesquet

  • Space