What is going on in Thomas Pesquet’s head? Many people wonder this. From Wednesday October 18, 2023, fans of the astronaut will be able to learn a little more thanks to the release of the spaceman’s autobiography, entitled My life without gravity (ed. Flammarion). As part of the promotion of his work, the one who participated in two long space missions, indulged in a few confidences on the set of C to you on October 18, 2023. He thus recounted the difficulties that paved his way and the resource people who were put on his path. This is howhe spoke with the Belgian singer Stromae while in space. “I had seen a video that he had made where he talked about his burnout and the relationship with fame, where he had this kind of guilt, because he lives on the love of people,” he explains. “At the same time, it’s very positive, but at the same time it weighs heavily on him because it changes a lot of things. And how it was all tangled up and at one point, he hadn’t managed to sort himself out. get out.” A situation which may have seemed hopeless for the artist and in which the astronaut finds himself. Indeed, his job as an astronaut also involves its share of difficulties.
A job that has a strong impact on family life
Questioned by Anne-Elisabeth Lemoine, Thomas Pesquet admitted that the return of his first space mission – the Soyuz MS-03 mission, between 2016 and 2017 – proved complicated to manage. Indeed, having become a true space star, there were many requests to which he had to respond. “I don’t like to say no, I like to please”, he confided. “All the good causes in the world have asked me to help them. God knows there are some – sick children, the environment… – things you can’t refuse. But we can’t say yes to everyone, it’s physically impossible.” A learning process that took time and impacted his personal life. “I found myself sacrificing all my time with my loved ones and family when I came back from a mission and two years of training, because I couldn’t say no and protect myself.” At the microphone of France Inter on October 18, 2023, the astronaut returned to a passage in his book where his companion, researcher Anne Mottet, told him thatThere was not “nothing positive for her” in its repeated space missions. Indeed, the repeated absences of Thomas Pesquet pushed the couple to make the decision not to have children. The reason is clear: each time the astronaut leaves on a mission, it is his partner who will be fully responsible for taking care of the children.