Does reality surpass imagination or does imagination surpass reality?
Thomas Pesquet and Oleg Novitski completed their return journey to Earth after spending nearly 200 days in the International Space Station. Throughout his stay, the French astronaut shared his work and daily life on social media. The only event he couldn’t comment on live was his journey in the Soyuz spacecraft.
To address this drawback, the writer Achille Eyraud narrates the expedition of his hero through space.
In this excerpt from “Voyage to Venus” published in 1865, Volfrang moves away from Earth, unlike today’s astronauts, but his view of our planet from up there does not envy theirs.
“After seven or eight hours of ascension into the darkness, I noticed with joy that, on the eastern edge of our globe, the atmosphere was gradually becoming brighter. Soon the sun reappeared to my eyes; its tint of orange-brown became less and less dark as it crossed the various layers of the atmosphere, and when it emerged after a few seconds, it appeared clearer and more brilliant than when we see it at the zenith on a serene summer day…”
