From her childhood room adorned with rocket posters to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral (United States), Sophie Adenot, the second French astronaut, has embarked on an exceptional journey to achieve her dream: space.
First modification: 02/10/2026 - 21:23
"Sophie was born an astronaut," says Claudie Haigneré, the first Frenchwoman to go into space in 1996 and the main inspiration for the woman who will succeed her on an eight-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
"I was 14, it clicked when I saw her leave (...) I remember very well that it was at that moment when I said to myself 'one day, it will be me,'" Sophie Adenot confided recently during a meeting with the press.
The second of four siblings, born in Cosne-Cours-sur-Loire (Nièvre), as a teenager she cut out her photos from magazines to paste them on her desk. A source of motivation "when I was doing mathematics that seemed so far from the space adventure I dreamed of," he recalls in an episode of the podcast "Elles font l'espace."
It was the beginning of a course of excellence. Graduated from the National Higher School of Aeronautics and Space (now ISAE-SUPAERO) and the prestigious MIT in Boston (United States), where she obtained a master's degree in aeronautical and space human factors sciences, she started at Airbus in 2004, as an engineer in the design of helicopter cabins.
A passion inherited from her grandfather, an Air Force mechanic, says this woman who "loves taking apart and repairing things."
"Tsunami"
A year later, he joined the Air Force to become a helicopter pilot and joined a squadron specializing in combat search and rescue missions, especially in Afghanistan, where he served two tours.
After being assigned to the squadron in charge of air transport of the highest authorities of the State, she became the first French helicopter test pilot in 2018.
"I love adventure, the unknown, facing improbable situations and seeing how you get there as a team or alone," she explains.
The future astronaut, who now holds the rank of colonel, has accumulated a total of 3,000 flight hours and 120 combat missions.
But this avid reader of biographies and stories about space adventure does not lose sight of her objective.
After a first failed attempt in 2008, when he was only 25 years old, he again applied to join the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut corps.
To prepare, the woman described by her instructors as especially studious left nothing to chance, even enlisting the services of the mental coach of a Vendée Globe winner, says journalist Marc Dana in the biography edited by Rocher "Sophie Adenot: from the Earth to the Stars."
In 2022, she was selected from 22,000 candidates and finally achieved her dream. For this mountain and yoga enthusiast, three years of intense preparation began between the United States and Europe, to pass the essential qualifications for her first mission.
A "tsunami" that "changed her life completely," although this mother of a teenager, very discreet about her private life, claims to "continue being herself, (...) being optimistic and sharing."
On the program: theoretical courses, rehearsal of the 15,000 procedures necessary on board the ISS, training with centrifuges, survival tests in the Pyrenees and the Baltic Sea, intensive sports...
A "sprint" documented in a logbook that the astronaut with blonde hair tied in a ponytail, always with a wide smile on her face, maintains on social networks.
Like his French predecessor Thomas Pesquet, he plans to feed that diary in space.
Perhaps we will see her listen to the "bird songs, the footsteps in the snow and the murmur of the torrents" that she recorded before leaving.
Or taste a dish prepared by chef Anne-Sophie Pic to celebrate her 44th birthday, on July 5, 400 km from Earth.
Adapted from its original French version
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