How many languages does Thomas Pesquet speak?

French is his native language; English, he already used as an airline pilot before being selected by the European Space Agency in 2009. Add to that Spanish, inherited from his years as an engineer, and Russian, learned for professional reasons. This combination is nothing exceptional among European astronauts: selection favors candidates able to work in several languages, because the station is as much a diplomatic object as a technical one. A crewed flight is prepared between Cologne, Houston, Moscow and Tsukuba, and each site has its own working language.

As long as crews reach orbit or return from it aboard a Soyuz, Russian is not a mere nicety: the procedures, the spacecraft's displays and the exchanges with the Korolev mission control center are in Russian, and part of the training takes place at Star City. European and American astronauts therefore follow months of courses, with exams to pass like any other technical qualification. On board, the station's Russian segment keeps its labels and checklists in that language.

English remains the common language of operations and radio, but daily use produces a blend that crews jokingly call "Runglish," made of Russian terms slipped into English sentences and vice versa. In space, language serves above all to avoid mistakes: short phraseology, spelled-out numbers, systematic acknowledgments. Multilingualism also helps on the ground, for public communication, since it allows astronauts to answer media from several countries without an intermediary.