“I was ready for it”: astronaut Sophie Adenot reviews her selection and talks about her future

A long preparation finally crowned with success. The day after the announcement of her appointment among the new promotion of astronauts of the European Space Agency (ESA), Sophie Adenot was the guest of BFMTV this Thursday, accompanied by the other French astronaut still active, Thomas Pesquet.

“I had prepared myself for that, yes, then you are never so sure when you know that there are 22,500 candidates applying. It is a very long preparation work and each stage brings its share of suspense before having the final answer”, shares the one who now bears the title of astronaut.

Sophie Adenot confesses that her family is “delighted” for her: “They have watched me work on this project for many, many years” but the family had “prepared” for the possibility that it “won’t make it to the end”. “You also have to continue if it doesn’t work,” she adds.

Its first flight not before 2026

For Sophie Adenot, now is the time to start a new preparation and “go back to school”. Thus, she details the program that awaits her in the coming years. Première étape, “un an d’entraînement de base où on apprend tous les sistèmes spatiaux, toutes les matières de mécanique spatiale, tous les éléments qui nous permettront de comprendre comment opérer les sistèmes de base de la station spatiale internationale”, explain-t -she.

Then comes the operational part: “When a mission is planned for a designated astronaut, then we’re going to go to the mission specific training [entraînement visant à une mission spécifique, NDLR] and that usually lasts two years.

All for an exit into space that, therefore, should not take place before 2026. “It is the great minimum”, explains the scientist, the cycle only begins in 2023.

The Moon, “is a dream”

Sophie Adenot is now focusing on upcoming ESA projects, including the Artemis program, which aims in particular at the return of humans to lunar soil by 2025.

The Moon, “of course it’s a dream”, slides the astronaut before qualifying: “First we will do things in order: we still have to learn everything we have to learn, do our tests in low orbit, to calibrate how the operations are “. (…) You don’t have to skip the stages”.

The Moon, however, is only a stopover for the American and European space agencies. The long-term goal of the Artemis program remains to send humans to Mars by 2040.