"You know it was very difficult for me to learn Russian language, however, Oleg also speaks French well now. We taught each other… Everything was wonderful," Pesquet told reporters during a meeting of the crew.
Russia's Novitsky, on his part, said that the most important was that "we understood each other despite the language we spoke." He also noted that the crew is always serious about the implementation of planned experiments in space.
On November 17, 2016, Novitsky, Pesquet and NASA's astronaut Peggy Whitson departed from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on the Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft for a six-month mission. On June 2, the Russian and French cosmonauts returned to the Earth. Whitson is expected to return with the crew of the next 51/52 mission.
The ISS program is a joint project of five space agencies: the United States' NASA, Russia’s Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
