2017-06-30 Fri

Thomas Pesquet floated in the space station and when he returned to Earth, he landed himself on four new French postage stamps.

La Poste, France’s postal service made sure that the release of the "Retour sur Terre" ("Return to Earth") commemorative was set to coincide with Pesquet's touchdown on Russia's Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft. Pesquet is a member of the European Space Agency’s astronaut corps and is also France’s tenth citizen to orbit Earth, not only that, he is the country’s third crewmember to live on the International Space Station.

La Poste promotes the thrilling experience of Thomas Pesquet with the four stamps on its website. Thomas Pesquet's Proxima mission covers Expeditions 50 and 51 of the International Space Station.

The letter rate stamps sell as a set of four and are priced at 4.60 euros. Each set recreates a photo taken of Pesquet during his six and a half months on the space station.

Pesquet is depicted on two of the stamps, wearing the extravehicular mobility unit spacesuit that he wore for two spacewalks with Expedition 50 commander Shane Kimbrough to connect a new set of batteries on the exterior of the space station. They also prepared one of the outpost’s ports for the installation of a docking adapter to support commercial crew spacecraft.

France’s flag is depicted on Pesquet spacesuit, on his left shoulder, in both photos taken in January and March 2017. The first image was captured while Pesquet was still inside the station's Quest airlock, his face visible inside his helmet. The second photo is the trending selfie of Pesquet, taken outside the orbiting outpost.

The other two set of stamps depicts images of things going inside the space station.

Pesquet who was a part of the French experiment EveryWear, wrote "Here I am using a 'tonometer' to measure my arteries while a patch is recording my temperature to monitor my sleeping patterns".

The fourth stamp shows Pesquet fastening his Expedition 51 patch to the Russian Sokol pressure suit which he wore to launch to and land from the space station.

In late April 2017, Pesquet wrote "We are getting the Sokol suits ready for our return to Earth soon, and having the right patches is very important,". He also added “"We don't really sew the patches into our suits, that would make holes and sharp needles are to be avoided on the space station. Instead, the patch and the suit have loops that we thread through with string and a blunt needle, tying a knot at the end."

The four self-adhesive stamps come within a full color folder that uses images of the space station over the planet and Earth.

Pesquet was selected as an ESA astronaut in 2009 and his landing on 2nd June marked the end of his first spaceflight. He is ranked second among his country’s space explorers. Also, he trails former astronaut Jane-Pierre Haignere by 13 days.