‘Earth is in our hands’: Astronaut Pesquet’s plea for the planet

PARIS: From his unique viewpoint hundreds of kilometres above Earth, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet told AFP he felt helpless watching fires rage across the planet below, calling for more to be done to protect this fragile “island of life”.

Pesquet said his two tours onboard the International Space Station convinced him more than ever that the world is failing to address the threat posed by climate change. He also witnessed moments of astonishing beauty while in space, some of which are captured in 300 photos published in his new book “La Terre entre nos mains” (Earth is in our Hands), released this week in France, the profits of which will go to charity.

Pesquet wrote that he initially “caught the photo bug” during his first tour on the ISS in 2016-2017. But it was during his last mission, from April to November 2021, that he fully embraced the endeavour, taking constant photos and sharing his passion with his colleagues in space.

“At first I was a bit of a Sunday photographer, then I really got a taste for it,” Pesquet told AFP in an interview. “When you to arrive at the station, you have that smartphone reflex: you see something great and want to immortalise it,” he said.

“But quickly you are confronted with limitations, if you want to take photos at night, for example, or of precise targets with long lenses,” he added. “It´s difficult because everything is manual”.

Around a dozen cameras are available to astronauts on the ISS, some permanently installed on the Cupula observation module, some in the US laboratory which has a porthole looking down on Earth.

Despite only having a few hours of leisure time a day, Pesquet took 245,000 photos during his last tour. “Many are not very good, but in six months there is a real progression curve,” he said.