We will have to wait to see a Frenchwoman succeed Claudie Haigneré.
The French Sophie Adenot, member of the new promotion of the European Space Agency will not fly into space before "at least 2026".
Invited on BFMTV, she confided in the months that await her to prepare for a future space stay.
On the program in particular, intense training at the European Space Center in Cologne (Germany), from April, explains the future astronaut.
Designated alongside four other astronauts, this 40-year-old woman, helicopter test pilot, will now "go back to school".
First of all, a year of “basic training” awaits her, where she must learn space mechanics, “all the elements to understand the space station and find your way around it”.
For Sophie Adenot (new ESA astronaut), a space mission will not take place before "at least" 2026 pic.twitter.com/gD8LQcnzAe
— BFMTV (@BFMTV) November 24, 2022
If Sophie Adenot is selected to participate in the next mission, specific training will then begin for two years.
"I've been waiting for this for 30 years, I can wait a few more years," she joked.
A long but classic process, underlined the astronaut Thomas Pesquet, invited by his side.
He also recalled having carried out his first mission in 2016, seven years after the start of his training, in 2009.
Claudie Haigneré's mission, a turning point
Becoming an astronaut is the result of a particularly mature project by Sophie Adenot, a graduate of the School of Air and Space: “There was only one poster in my room, that of a rocket.
Space exploration made me dream from an early age, and the rest came later.
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Read alsoEngineer, pilot... who is Sophie Adenot, new astronaut and French pride?
She evokes a first “click” at the age of 10, when she read the biography of Marie Curie, which inspired her a lot and pushed her to turn to a scientific career.
But it was above all "the take-off of Claudie Haigneré", in 1996, which constituted a turning point: "It was at this moment that I said to myself:
From now on I will do everything I can to get there.
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Sophie Adenot declared herself “focused” and determined to “prove herself” to achieve another dream, that of participating in a lunar mission.
"It's difficult to project yourself, things are lived as and when," she said.
