LIVE – “It’s the beginning of a new era”: Pesquet welcomes the launch of a new rocket to the Moon

Thomas Pesquet says the anticipation is already high in Florida within hours of the NASA rocket taking off.

He says that since Sunday night motorhomes and tents have already been set up and that “people have put signs on their doors.”

It is “the atmosphere of the big days,” he says.

The astronaut talks about his chances of going to the Moon in the next few years, believing that they are “not negligible”, despite the competition.

“I will not be the only volunteer,” he recalls, before declaring that he has “an important opportunity to maybe one day find myself at the top of this mission, it would be magical.”

Astronaut Thomas Pesquet hails the launch of a new rocket to the Moon, evoking the “beginning of a new era”, on BFMTV.

“It is the return of humanity to the Moon” and “the beginning of a new era” that should allow “to settle there more and more, to build bases”.

“It is the return of humanity to the Moon.” With the Artemis mission, a “new era” begins, welcomes Thomas Pesquet. BFMTV guest, the famous French astronaut who was in command of the ISS in 2021 is delighted with the start of this mission on Monday.

His interview will be on BFMTV starting at 11 am

Weather permitting, the Orion spacecraft will blast off for the Moon from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday starting at 8:33 a.m. local time (2:33 p.m. in Paris), with the NASA Space Launch System (SLS). ) rocket. The trip lasts 42 days, 3 hours and 20 minutes, with a return scheduled for October 10.

This trip to the Moon is the first of several others that should eventually allow man to reach Mars.

>> All the details of this mission can be found here.

Welcome to this direct dedicated to the launch of NASA’s rocket to the Moon as part of the Artemis 1 mission.