A French astronaut is to join Russian and US counterparts blasting off today for the International Space Station (ISS), taking some Michelin-starred cuisine along to help celebrate in gastronomic style while in Earth’s orbit.
French space rookie Thomas Pesquet, 38, is scheduled to lift off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with veteran US and Russian colleagues Peggy Whitson and Oleg Novitsky, for a six-month mission to the ISS.
It will be the former airline pilot’s first trip to space — and to mark the occasion he will bring along a selection of dishes by top French chefs Alain Ducasse and Thierry Marx, including beef tongue with truffled foie gras and duck breast confit.
“We will have food prepared by a Michelin-starred chef at the station. We have food for the big feasts: for Christmas, New Year’s and birthdays. We’ll have two birthdays, mine and Peggy’s,” said the Frenchman, who is also taking a saxophone up with him.
Russia is currently the only country carrying out launches to the ISS via its workhorse Soyuz rocket that uses the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Pesquet, Novitsky, and Whitson were scheduled to take off at 2:20am today and dock at the ISS late tomorrow.
Pesquet has trained for seven years for his first space flight, but his crewmates both have extensive experience.
Novitsky, 45, is going to the station for the second time.
Fifty-six year-old Whitson is going on her third trip and holds the record for time in space for a woman. She will assume command of the ISS — for a second — after March.
Whitson said the fancy French food will certainly be welcome.
“I think the thing that I find the most challenging about space flights is the lack of variety of the food,” she said.
However, above all she stressed the international cooperation embodied by the ISS.
“I think quite the most important thing about it [ISS], it’s the demonstration of what people can do together,” she said.
Pesquet, who is the first French national to be sent to the ISS by the European Space Agency since 2008, said he still “can’t believe” he is going.
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