PARIS —
From his unique viewpoint hundreds of kilometers 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”.
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Pesquet said his
two tours onboard the International Space Station (ISS) 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 space
station in 2016–2017.
But it was
during his last mission, from April to November 2021, that he fully embraced
the endeavor, 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
said.
“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”.
245,000 photos
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.
Throughout the
photos of rivers, oceans, deserts, mountains, sunsets, and sunrises, the
astronaut’s amazement at the world shines through.
“The planet is
so vast and diverse that you still don’t feel like you’ve seen everything. Even
after 400 days in orbit, there are still some things that surprise me, places I
haven’t seen,” he said.
The speed of the
station, which hurtles through space at 28,000 kilometers an hour, means that
“we are never above the same area at the same time of day,” he said.
One day, he was
surprised to find out that the northern lights appeared blue from space.
Pesquet only managed to get a photo of the phenomenon because his US colleague
Shane Kimbrough told him it was taking place, after spotting it out of his
bedroom window.
‘Sinister
spectacle’
But Pesquet did not only witness Earth’s beauty.
He also captured
images of a world in a state of degradation: the “sinister spectacle” of
hurricanes, tornadoes and fires that stormed across the planet during his
second stint of 200 days in space.
Pesquet
described himself as a “helpless” witness to the carnage.
“What struck me
the most were the fires. We could see the flames and smoke very clearly,” he
said, which gave the impression of “the end of the world”.
“Like in the
movies,” he watched as entire regions were engulfed. Parts of southern Europe,
British Columbia, and
California were “consumed little by little by a blanket
of smoke”, he added.
“I saw the difference just four years made,” he said. “My first mission
was in winter and the second in summer, so it was normal that there were more
fires — but overall I saw more violent phenomenona.”
Watching these
increasingly extreme weather events, “which we know are linked to climate
change, has convinced me that we not doing enough to protect our planet,”
Pesquet wrote in the book.
Without science
“we would be lost in the face of the magnitude of the challenges” ahead, he
said.
“It’s not too late, but
the longer we wait...” he trailed off. “Every year we say ‘now is the time act’
— and it’s the same the next year, we only make small changes without a strong
global impact.”
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