French astronaut Sophie Adenot will be the first of the 2022 class of European astronauts to fly to the International Space Station in spring 2026, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced on Wednesday. Sophie Adenot, a helicopter pilot, will become the second French astronaut in history to go into orbit, 30 years after Claudie Haigneré.
“A giant step” reacts Sophie Adenot
“It’s a giant step,” reacted Sophie Adenot, from the NASA space center in Houston where she is training. “A real source of pride! Sophie Adenot is a model of female scientific commitment for all our young girls,” the Minister of Research, Sylvie Retailleau, told AFP. Sophie Adenot, 41, was assigned to the Space Station (ISS) with her Belgian colleague Raphaël Liégeois, 36, among the five European astronauts in the 2022 class.
In spring 2026, she will join the crew of the ISS, 400 kilometers above Earth, where Raphaël Liégeois will succeed her at the end of her six-month mission. “The assignment of Sophie and Raphaël is a tangible result of our commitment to maintaining a strong European presence” in space, where “exploration activities are developing at an unprecedented pace,” declared the director general of the ESA, Josef Aschbacher, during a space summit in Brussels.
The five newly graduated astronauts “will all be flying by 2030”
With the seven astronauts from the previous promotion (2009), which includes the Frenchman Thomas Pesquet in its ranks, space Europe now has a corps of 11 astronauts, “the largest number we have ever had at the same time” , the head of the ESA, which brings together 22 member states, told AFP. The five newly graduated astronauts “will all be flying by 2030, which is good news because in the past, flight schedules have not always been so precise. Some have had to wait up to ten years to join the ISS,” added Josef Aschbacher.
The astronauts of the class of 2022, selected from more than 20,000 candidates, include two women, Sophie Adenot and the British Rosemary Coogan, and three men, Raphaël Liégeois, the Swiss Marco Sieber and the Spaniard Pablo Alvarez Fernandez. All received their diploma last April, after a year of training at the European Space Center in Cologne (Germany).
Lieutenant Colonel and first female helicopter test pilot
Sophie Adenot, who grew up in Burgundy, is an engineer and graduated from the National School of Aeronautics and Space. She holds the rank of lieutenant colonel and was the first female helicopter test pilot. Mother of a young child, she speaks English, German, Spanish, Russian, and teaches yoga.
Raphaël Liégeois, engineer and specialist in neuroscience, studied biomedical engineering at the University of Liège, Centrale (Paris) and the University of Paris-Sud Orsay. He is a hot air balloon and glider pilot.