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She is the next French woman to board the International Space Station, for a mission planned for 2026.
She said to herself “super happy”. Twenty-five years after Claudie Haigneré, Sophie Adenot will travel aboard the International Space Station during a mission planned for spring 2026, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced on May 22. “I know it’s going to be two very intense years before takeoff, but I’m super happy”added the French astronaut to franceinfo for the exclusive series “L’Espace d’un moment”.
His schedule will be busy, more so than during his basic training at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne (Germany). “We are moving up a gear in particular because we have to acquire all the qualifications, from the most basic to the most sophisticated”remarks Sophie Adenot, who arrived at the beginning of May at the NASA space center in Houston (Texas).
“We will start with the spacewalk qualification. It’s a block of five to six months where we train in the pool to be able to do the spacewalks afterwards.”
Sophie Adenot, French astronautin “The Space of a Moment”
This is only part of his preparation. “We learned that there were 15,000 procedures to master and understand”, to be able to be operational on board the ISS, she notes. In the next two years, the former Air Force and Space Force pilot will also have to learn to work with the members of her crew and train in the scientific manipulations that she will be required to carry out at aboard the ISS. Indeed, during a typical six-month mission in the International Space Station, astronauts participate in around 200 experiments: they must learn the right actions to perform in their laboratory which orbits 400 km above the ground.