Sophie Adenot, a life dedicated to one goal: to become an astronaut

Laura Laplaud 11:13 a.m., December 09, 2022

Had she considered it for a second?

France has a new space traveler.

Sophie Adenot is part of the new promotion of European astronauts, selected from nearly 23,000 candidates, including 7,000 French.

A list unveiled by the European Space Agency (ESA) on November 23.

"The first emotion was an explosion of joy associated with a wave of serenity", she confides at the microphone of Europe 1 on Friday.

>> LISTEN -

The exclusive interview with Sophie Adenot, exceptional guest of Europe Matin

"For me, it's an inner fire"

"For me, it's an inner fire, a vocation, since I was little, it makes me dream."

The engineer has focused her entire life on this passion, her professional career, her hobbies, everything was calculated to one day succeed in being this French astronaut.

"I read dozens of biographies of astronauts trying to take inspiration [to know] how they got there," she slips.

Selected during a recruitment campaign launched in February 2021, the recruitment process was not easy.

"There were six stages, selections on file, cognitive tests, psychological interviews, individual and group tests where we were put under pressure to see how we reacted", she detailed advising to read the comic book 

by Marion Montaigne, to find out more about these stages.

A course of excellence

At 40, the engineer has a career of excellence.

In 2004, when she was only 22, she obtained an engineering degree from the National School of Aeronautics and Space (Isae Supaero), the same school as Thomas Pesquet.

She then entered as an engineer for Airbus Helicopters in Marignane where she worked on the design of cockpits.

"I fell in love with the helicopters I was working on so much that I said to myself 'well, rather than being in my office designing helicopter cockpits, I'm going to make the cockpit my entire office', it was crazy bet!"

she remembers.

At 23, she joined the Air Force and took part in several search and rescue flights in hostile terrain.

Sophie Adenot does not stop there.

In 2018, she became the first female experimental helicopter test pilot in France to test prototypes.

In 2022, she becomes the eleventh French astronaut and the second French woman astronaut, after Claudie Haigneré.

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 PORTRAIT - Who is Sophie Adenot, chosen to integrate the new promotion of ESA?

An explorer's soul

So, going up into the skies was far from scary for her even if she recognizes that it is also about a hostile ground.

"Each flight is a test flight, I know that well as a test pilot. There is a large part of the unknown where you will also have to improvise, but there are also a lot of procedures. of exploration, we are in the action. Of course, we say to ourselves that it is an ambitious mission and somewhere, which gives a little stage fright", she says at the microphone of Europe 1.

Sophie Adenot is a quiet force, a calm voice that expresses itself with modesty and for her, the space adventure does not happen by itself.

This adventure is so "difficult technically speaking, humanly speaking, that if we are not a team, we cannot do anything".

Learn all about the profession of astronaut

The path to space is not for tomorrow, Sophie Adenot will first have to get into training and move to Cologne, Germany, where the European Astronaut Center is located.

Companion and mother of a little boy, she will then be trained in space sciences and will begin training with a lot of sport, survival courses or even parabolic flights.

The French should go into space for the first time in four or five years.