Thomas Pesquet

Thomas Pesquet was born on 27 February 1978 in Rouen, France, and reached space through a career that blended engineering and aviation. He earned a master's degree in aerospace engineering from Supaéro (the École nationale supérieure de l'aéronautique et de l'espace) in Toulouse, specializing in spacecraft design and control, then worked as an engineer on spacecraft dynamics and later as a research engineer at the French space agency CNES. He retrained as an airline pilot, flying the Airbus A320 for Air France, before being selected in May 2009 as one of six new members of the European Astronaut Corps from thousands of applicants. He completed basic training in November 2010, and a multilingual, endlessly curious temperament — he speaks French, English, Spanish, German and Russian, and is an avid photographer, saxophonist and judoka — made him one of ESA's most recognizable ambassadors.

Pesquet has flown two long-duration missions to the International Space Station. His first, the Proxima mission, began on 17 November 2016 with a launch aboard Soyuz MS-03 to join Expedition 50/51. Over roughly 196 days he ran about fifty European experiments and conducted his first spacewalks, working outside the station with NASA's Shane Kimbrough to replace batteries and service station systems. His second flight, the Alpha mission, launched on 23 April 2021 aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour as part of Crew-2 and Expedition 65, lasting about 199 days. During Alpha he carried out additional spacewalks to install new solar arrays, bringing his career total to six EVAs and nearly forty hours outside the station — a European cumulative-spacewalk record. On 4 October 2021 he took command of the ISS, becoming the first French astronaut ever to command the orbiting laboratory.

With two missions and nearly 396 days in space — roughly 9,500 hours — Pesquet is among the most experienced ESA astronauts of his generation and remains an active member of the corps. He is perhaps best known to the public as one of the most prolific photographers in spaceflight history, sharing tens of thousands of images of Earth during his two stays aloft and using that platform to campaign on climate change, ocean conservation and STEM education. A recipient of France's Légion d'honneur and the Ordre national du Mérite, he has become a leading European voice for human exploration, and his experience keeps him among the astronauts most frequently considered for future flights.