French astronaut Thomas Pesquet sets his sights on the Moon after ISS success

French astronaut Thomas Pesquet has arrived in Cologne, Germany, after safely landing on earth with three International Space Station colleagues early on Tuesday morning. He will now spend three weeks recuperating and undergoing laboratory tests to see how his body has reacted to spending 200 days in orbit. He has already set his sights on a Moon mission alongside the Americans in the coming years.

"I'm very well," Pesquet said, stepping out of the special French military aircraft which brought him from Houston, USA, to Cologne, Germany where the centre for European astronauts is based.

The Crew-2 team, made up of Pesquet, NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and Akihiko Hoshide of Japan splashed down in the early hours of Tuesday morning, before being taken for a debriefing at the space centre in Houston.

Although it was his second mission in space, it was the first sea landing for Pesquet. His first landing took place in Kazakhstan with the Russian Soyouz craft in 2017.

"Landing on the sea was different, we were able to make the most of watching it through the large windows, it was really spectacular," he told reporters gathered at the airport in Cologne.

However, he indicated that although it was good to be on solid ground, it would take some getting used to again.

"We're not quite sure of our movements, I still feel very heavy," he said.

"I wouldn't be able to run a 100 metre race right now," he added, a reference to the initial sensations of gravity after being weightless for six months.

European Space Agency (ESA) director Josef Aschbacher said the mission had been an "immense success", in terms of communication as well as science.

Adjusting to life on earth
At just 43 years-of-age, Pesquet has clocked up 400 days on board the ISS, carried out 40 hours of spacewalks, conducted numerous scientific experiments and taken on the role of commander.

These feats will no doubt play in Pesquet's favour as he sets his sights on his next goal: exploring the Moon.

But before he can do that, he will spend the next three weeks re-adapting to life on earth at Envihab - a series of specialised laboratories used for studying the effects of extreme environmental conditions on humans - before taking a break.

He will also play "lab rat" and carry out a battery of tests to see how his body adapted to space conditions.

"Certain experiments will be on the cardiovascular system, others related to neuroscience and the central nervous system," Laura André Boyet, an instructor at the European astronaut centre said.

"There will be a whole lot of tests with different instruments depending on the scientific protocol. It might be with a syringe, an ultrasound or an MRI scan. There will be other experiments too based on his own medical performance, to see how his body has evolved. We will look at how his experience has affected his eyes for example," she explained.

Climate change observation
"He has completed two extraordinary space missions," says Lionel Suchet, the managing director of France's space agency CNES, who said that the success of Pesquet's space walks is key to proving he's capable to handle further missions.

Pesquet's ease at communicating with the public is also a major asset, and has contributed to an increase in interest among young people.

Throughout his stay on the ISS, he regularly posted spectacular images of the earth and weather patterns on social media from his vantage point of 400 kilometres above the planet.

He also used the opportunity to warn French President Emmanuel Macron of the dangers of climate change and pollution, of which he could visually measure the difference since his last trip to space.

Macron said he would bring this observation to the attention of leaders gathering for the UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow until 12 November.

Next stop the Moon?
One European is destined to join the American mission to the Moon for the first time, and there are seven candidates in the running, Pesquet being one of them. The ESA has not yet made a decision.

Meanwhile, NASA chief Bill Nelson announced on Tuesday that the United States will send a crewed mission to the Moon "no earlier than 2025," officially pushing back the launch by at least a year.

A target date of 2024 was set by the administration of former president Donald Trump when it launched the Artemis program.

But the program has since faced legal issues as well as numerous development delays ranging from its vehicles to the space suits.

NASA wants to build a sustained habitat on the Moon and use the lessons learned from long expeditions there to develop a crewed mission to Mars by the 2030s.