Sophie Adenot

Sophie Adenot was born on 5 July 1982 in Cosne-Cours-sur-Loire, in central France, and rose to become one of the most accomplished pilots of her generation before turning her sights on space. She studied aerospace engineering at the prestigious ISAE-SUPAERO in Toulouse, specializing in the flight dynamics of aircraft and spacecraft, and earned a Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she worked in the Man-Vehicle Laboratory studying how the human vestibular system adapts to unusual motion — research directly relevant to how astronauts cope with the disorientation of spaceflight. After a year at Airbus Helicopters in Marignane designing helicopter cockpits, she joined the French Air and Space Force in 2005. Adenot went on to graduate from the Empire Test Pilots' School in the United Kingdom and, in 2018, became the first female helicopter test pilot in France, later flying evaluation missions at Cazaux Air Base for the French defense procurement agency. By the time she applied to become an astronaut she had logged more than 3,000 flight hours across 22 different types of helicopters.

In 2022, Adenot was chosen from more than 22,500 applicants as a member of the European Space Agency's astronaut class — informally nicknamed 'The Hoppers' — becoming only the second French woman ever selected to the European corps, after Claudie Haigneré. That same year she was appointed a Chevalier of the French National Order of Merit. Her first spaceflight followed on 13 February 2026, when she launched as a mission specialist aboard NASA's SpaceX Crew-12, riding a Crew Dragon to the International Space Station for a long-duration stay with Expedition 74. Her flight, ESA's portion of the mission, was given the name 'Epsilon.' With that launch she became the first French woman in space since Haigneré, whose own missions flew in 1996 and 2001 — a gap of roughly a quarter-century that Adenot's flight brought to a close. During the expedition she took part in the station's dense schedule of European and international research spanning human physiology, materials science, and technology demonstrations.

Adenot has embraced a public role beyond the technical demands of spaceflight, using her visibility as an ambassador for gender equality in science and engineering and to encourage girls to pursue careers in STEM — work for which she received a medal from the French National Assembly in 2021. An avid pilot, skier, scuba diver, and practitioner of yoga, she brings the same methodical, safety-focused discipline of a test pilot to her work in orbit. As an active ESA astronaut in the early phase of her career, she stands among the newest generation of European spacefarers helping to sustain the International Space Station while the agency looks ahead to lunar exploration through the Artemis partnership, and her record as France's first female helicopter test pilot and first woman in space in a generation has already secured her a distinctive place in the country's aerospace history.