Sophie Adenot

French test pilot, helicopter instructor, and the first woman to graduate from the EMPIRE helicopter test-pilot course in the United Kingdom. Sophie Adenot is one of ESA’s newest astronauts — selected in 2022, flying her first mission — and she brings a military aviation background that is still rare among European crew members.

Before ESA

Adenot was born in 1982 in France. She studied engineering, earning her degree from one of France’s grandes écoles, and joined the French Air and Space Force as a helicopter pilot. She qualified on multiple rotorcraft types, accumulating thousands of hours on the Eurocopter Caracal (a medium-lift transport helicopter used in combat search and rescue) and the Airbus Tigre (an attack helicopter).

She went on to attend the EMPIRE Test Pilots’ School at QinetiQ Boscombe Down in the United Kingdom, one of only a handful of specialist test-pilot schools in the world. She graduated as a rotary-wing test pilot — the first woman to do so from that programme — and returned to France to work as a test pilot and flight-test engineer, evaluating helicopter performance and systems in the demanding environment of military certification.

Her route to ESA was through the 2022 astronaut selection, which drew over 22,500 applications from across ESA’s member states. From that pool, five career astronauts were chosen. Adenot was one of them.

Spaceflight career

Expedition 74 is Adenot’s first spaceflight. She launched aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon in December 2025 alongside her crewmates for a six-month stay. As a first-time flyer she has been paired with experienced crew members for the critical tasks — docking operations, EVA preparation, and emergency drills — while taking lead responsibility for the European-side life-support and water-recovery system upgrades.

Her callsign is “Astro-Sophie”, and she has been active on social media throughout the mission, sharing her experience of adapting to microgravity and the daily routine of life on the Station.

This expedition

Adenot serves as flight engineer on Expedition 74. Her primary responsibilities include the European Columbus module’s experiment programme, the life-support system upgrades she was assigned pre-flight, and general maintenance across the American and European segments. Her test-pilot background makes her a natural fit for vehicle approach monitoring and anomaly assessment.

The person

She is described by colleagues as precise, methodical, and quietly competitive — traits that served her well in test flying and translate directly to Station operations. She is the first French woman to fly to the ISS since Claudie Haigneré’s short visit in 2001, and only the second French woman in space. Off duty she photographs the European countryside from the Cupola and exercises with the kind of discipline you would expect from someone who spent years keeping up with combat helicopter schedules.