On Friday, April 23, 2021, the world’s eyes were on the Kennedy Special Center in Florida. On board Space X’s Crew Dragon, Thomas Pesquet and his team flew to the International Space Station (ISS), at 5:49 am local time (11:49 am in Paris). A historical moment scrutinized by the astronaut’s companion who never fails to encourage him. Before the big departure, Anne Mottet went to the tarmac at Cape Canaveral for a last goodbye filmed by many cameras. A tender moment for the couple who will live apart for six months, the time of the Alpha mission.
A few days before the big departure, the astronaut confided in the columns of the Parisian, from Friday April 16, 2021, on his funny job. If he likes going to space so much it’s because “life is simpler” over there. “It’s a bit like a holiday in an air-conditioned center. It’s a break with new friends, new landscapes”, he said. However, his daily life on earth is not to displease him either: “But after a while, you want to get back to your normal life, your room, your parents … to come back to your planet”.
Thomas Pesquet’s companion “work to save the world”
A way of life to which his relatives “accommodate “ perhaps “wrong”, But “it’s normal”, he estimated. “It is not an ideal job for the family. Astronaut, it is a consuming passion. I work all day and in the evening too. On weekends, I play sports, which is also a bit part of the job. It’s a job that contaminates everything “, explained the French. And if he has no children, it is also because “it’s a couple’s choice” : “We never had so much time, nor the irrepressible desire to have it “.
As for her partner, she too has a busy professional life. In charge of livestock policies at the FAO, a department of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome, her schedule does not allow her to live with her companion. “She works to save the world, develops crops resistant to climate change “, said the 43-year-old astronaut in the columns of Release in 2017.
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