From The United Nations
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS
Media www.rajawalisiber.com – The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has designated European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet as Goodwill Ambassador on the International Day of Human Space Flight (12 April).
The French astronaut has been working together with FAO since 2018 to raise global awareness on food security and climate change. The nomination will reinforce and support the FAO’s advocacy to end hunger and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
At the ceremony, FAO Director-General QU Dongyu applauded Thomas Pesquet’s commitment and support to FAO’s mission. SOUNDBITE (English) QU Dongyu, Director-General, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):
“Over the years, Thomas has worked in support of the FAO to help raise awareness of the impact of climate change on agriculture, of the importance of access to nutritious foods, and of how critical it is for us to manage our natural resources wisely, reducing food loss and waste. I am delighted that today you are committing to working even more closely with us, in your new capacity as an FAO Goodwill Ambassador.” The newly appointed Goodwill Ambassador said he was honored by the nomination.
He explained that the experience gained from his first space mission in 2017 made him become more aware of the impact of climate change and extreme weather on planet Earth motivating him to partner with FAO for common good cause.
Having witnessed some of the damages that deforestation and climate change have had on planet Earth from space, Thomas Pesquet called for a joint effort to protect and save the home to 7.8 billion people. Pesquet will bring the flag of FAO and that of the United Nations with him in his next mission.
He will be travelling to the International Space Station (ISS) with the SpaceX Crew Dragon and will spend six months in space with JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and pilot Megan McArthur. SOUNDBITE (English) Thomas Pesquet, Astronaut, European Space Agency (ESA):
“The goals of those six months onboard the space station – mostly there’s two things; it’s research. We are doing science experiments up there that you couldn’t be doing on Earth because of the conditions of microgravity and the space environment up there. And so, we are sending the results back to all the laboratories on the Earth to make things better, to find new discoveries and to make progress just generally speaking. The other thing that we are doing is also preparing the next steps of space exploration because we have big questions to answer; where did life come from on the Earth? Could life disappear today? Could we lose our atmosphere, lose our water like it happened on Mars for example and that’s why we want to go because we want to answer those questions to know where we come from.” The goals of the Alpha mission, named after Alpha Centauri, the closest stellar system to Earth, are to make scientific experiments and preparing the next steps for space exploration.
For this reason, the astronauts will try to cultivate vegetables on the ISS to understand if in the future it will be possible to bring less food from Earth, and to produce it locally on spaceships during the exploration missions He said COVID-19 pandemic has affected their preparation work.
SOUNDBITE (English) Thomas Pesquet, Astronaut, European Space Agency (ESA): “It wasn’t easy. I mean, it’s certainly been harder for a lot of other people, so I can’t complain. But we had to adapt. We had to change the way we’re doing things, just like everyone everywhere on the planet. We had to reduce or human interactions. We did everything remotely. We tried to reduce attendance to minimum to all our training activities. We put measures into place obviously mask, social distancing. Everything was being taken very seriously. In spite of all this, we managed to be ready on time, which is quite amazing, but I think it just it just speaks volumes about just the resilience that people have in this space business, but really everywhere on the planet.” In order to reduce waste,
Pesquet has asked to also work on innovative edible packages to bring food to space with the purpose to use these technologies on Earth. Thomas Pesquet was born in Rouen, France, on 27 February 1978.
He was launched to the International Space Station for his first six-month mission, Proxima, in November 2016. Pesquet’s second spaceflight was announced on 28 July 2020. 12th April 2021 marks 60 years since Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin completed one full orbit of the Earth, becoming the first human to travel to space. To celebrate the beginning of the space era for mankind, the United Nations General Assembly declared in 2011, 12th April as the International Day of Human Space Flight.