French astronaut Thomas Pesquet took about 245,000 photos during his two missions to the International Space Station ISS. “At first I was just a hobby photographer, but then I enjoyed it more,” he told AFP news agency. “There are still places I’ve never seen that surprise me, even after 400 days in space,” he said.
Aurora, seas, islands, deserts, mountains, sunrises and sunsets fascinated him. “The world is so big and has so many different facets that I didn’t feel like I had seen it all,” he said.
Disturbing natural disasters
During his last mission, on which he returned a year ago, he had been affected by the increasing destruction of the environment, for example, massive forest fires. “It was the fires that upset me. We could see the flames and the smoke, the scale of the fire was frightening,” he recalls.
The number of extreme weather events such as fires, hurricanes and hurricanes made it clear to him that we “were not doing enough to protect our planet,” Pesquet said. “Every year it says ‘We must act now,’ but it’s just small actions that don’t change the overall trend,” he criticized, shortly before the UN climate conference that kicked off in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt on Sunday.
Pesquet is publishing a book in France this week featuring her 300 best images from space. It is titled “The World is in Our Hands”. He leaves the copyright to a charity that provides food to the needy.
(AFP)