Sophie Adenot will soon be the 2nd French astronaut. La Bourguignonne was chosen for an upcoming mission aboard the ISS, the international space station, as announced on May 22, 2024 by the European Space Agency (ESA).
The first French woman selected since 1985 in the training program of ESA, the European Space Agency, Sophie Adenot will not remain with her feet on the ground for much longer! The Frenchwoman, whose selection was announced at the end of 2022, a prerequisite for long training at ESA headquarters in Cologne in Germany, will be part of a future space mission aboard the international space station, the ISS.
The announcement was made by ESA on May 22, 2024. Sophie Adenot was selected alongside Belgian astronaut Raphaël Liégeois. Two missions will be concerned. NASA plans a first mission in spring 2026, including a European astronaut from this program. The second astronaut selected, without us yet knowing the order of their two missions, will fly at the end of 2026, probably in the fall. The two European astronauts were already training on the NASA site in Houston, at the Lyndon B. Johnson space center.
Sophie Adenot, 42, follows in the footsteps of Claudie Haigneré, the first French woman to have flown into space in 1985, and of Thomas Pesquet, the most experienced French astronaut with his two long flights in recent years aboard the ISS. Originally from Burgundy, Sophie Adenot graduated from the National School of Aeronautics and Space (ISAE-SUPAERO) in Toulouse. She also obtained a master’s degree in human factors engineering from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States.
A distinguished pilot, she holds private pilot, glider and skydiving licenses. Hired by Airbus Helicopters after her studies, Sophie Adenot then worked on cockpit design before joining the Air and Space School to become a helicopter pilot. In 2018, she became the first female helicopter test pilot in France, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel in 2020.
In 2021, Sophie Adenot applied to ESA during its astronaut recruitment campaign. Selected in November 2022 from more than 22,500 candidates, she became the second French woman astronaut, more than two decades after Claudie Haigneré, who was one of her sources of inspiration. After this announcement, the new class of ESA astronauts, equal and including the first paraastronaut, John McFall, began training in spring 2023 at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, Germany.
This 12-month training was to be followed by specific preparation for the mission that will be assigned to them within the International Space Station (ISS). If no lunar mission is planned for this promotion, the feat remains nonetheless remarkable. Sophie Adenot is preparing to represent France in space, 41 years after Claudie Haigneré’s historic flight. In two years, she will join the international space station, also following in the footsteps of Thomas Pesquet, the last Frenchman to have visited the ISS.