She will be the eleventh French woman to go into space. On Wednesday, Sophie Adenot joined the very selective list of astronauts who will fly to the International Space Station in 2026. The European Space Agency presented its new recruit, who must now continue two years of intense preparation, the first of which training will take place in Houston (United States), at NASA. Portrait of this winner from Burgundy, with a very different background from her predecessors.
Fascinated by aviation, she tried to join the ESA at the age of 25
Sophie Adenot was born in 1982 in a small town in Nièvre, Cosne-Cours-sur-Loire, with a population of 10,000. Daughter of a notary and a pharmacist, she was already fascinated by her grandfather who repaired planes. But the turning point came in 1996, when she saw the first French astronaut, Claudie Haigneré, fly to the Russian Mir station. She does not know that she will be his successor, but her ambitions are already set towards the sky.
“The dream was distant, inaccessible. So, little by little, I cut everything down brick by brick”Sophie Adenot, in a video from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
First, she graduated from Supaéro in Toulouse in 2004, then obtained her sports skydiving certificate at MIT in Cambridge. She practiced high-level sport (climbing, mountain biking, skiing, diving and, later, yoga, which she teaches today) to be able to join the Air Force in 2005.
In 2008, when she was 25 years old (instead of the required 27) she tried for the first time to join the ESA, in the same promotion as Thomas Pesquet, in vain.
“It was a failure, but at the same time, I didn’t believe in myself at all. It was the greatest failure because I was able to prepare myself, for the ten years that followed, for this new selection,” Sophie Adenot told Le Figaro.
First female helicopter test pilot… and first steps at ESA
In 2018, and after varied experiences – engineer at Airbus, rescue missions, presidential transport – Sophie Adenot became the first female helicopter test pilot in France.
With 3,000 hours of flight time on 22 types of helicopters, she ignores obstacles and remarks (“Sophie, you don’t weigh the weight of your combat vest, you’re not made to be among us”). A first consecration for the one whose model is many French pilots like Jacqueline Auriol or Caroline Aigle.
In April 2022, her 17 years of service and efforts were recognized: Sophie Adenot received the medal of Knight of the National Order of Merit. Seven months later, La Nivernaise joined the new class of 17 ESA astronauts. By receiving her patent, she officially became the second French woman astronaut, following in the footsteps of Claudie Haigneré whom she admired. As indicated by the ESA, she speaks English, German, Russian and has some Spanish.
Only ten French people went to space before her
The journey of Sophie Adenot, who has since become a colonel in the Air Force, particularly impresses her little boy. “He is simply happy for his mother. He sees me coming home with a smile like that,” she told France Info last year.
Until May 22, 2024, and her new challenge: the announcement of her departure for the ISS, for 6 months, in 2026. Sophie Adenot will be the eleventh French woman to take off for space, four decades after Jean-Loup Chrétien, who took off in 1982 for the Saliout 7 space station.
In an interview with BFM, she details the first part of the intense training for life in space, which she has continued so far, day after day, in Cologne. “I have the soul of an explorer,” she explains, “everything that I am introduced to that takes me out of my comfort zone, I like, because you always learn something about yourself.” .
The ESA is notably preparing its new recruits for the Artemis program, which aims to send humans back to the Moon and then, in the distant future, to prepare equipment to go to Mars.
