Astronaut Thomas Pesquet to return to Earth on Monday

Frenchman Thomas Pesquet and three other astronauts will leave the International Space Station on Sunday, and will land off the coast of Florida no earlier than Monday at 12:14 GMT, after spending more than six months in space, Nasa announced Friday.

 

The Crew-2 crew, composed of Thomas Pesquet, Akihiko Hoshide from Japan and Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur from the United States, will return to Earth before the arrival of the four Crew-3 astronauts on board the ISS, whose takeoff has been delayed several times due to the weather. As we prepare to leave, there is a bit of a bittersweet feeling, Thomas Pesquet said earlier Friday at a press conference from the space station. We may never come back to see the ISS, and it's really a magical place. The 43-year-old French astronaut is completing the second mission of his career in orbit, Alpha. He had arrived aboard the ISS with his crewmates on April 24.