French astronaut Sophie Adenot is due to leave the International Space Station on October 7 after nearly eight months in orbit. During her εpsilon mission she completed three spacewalks and became the first French woman to work outside the station.
The Crew-12 astronauts are scheduled to begin their return from the International Space Station on October 7 and splash down off the California coast on October 8. Adenot will return with NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. The schedule could change depending on weather, sea conditions and the readiness of the spacecraft and recovery team.
Adenot launched to the station on February 13, 2026, for the εpsilon mission. If the crew returns as scheduled, her first spaceflight will have lasted 237 days, setting a record for the longest single mission by a European astronaut. The previous European record was held by Italy’s Luca Parmitano, whose 2020 mission lasted 200 days. Adenot passed that mark on September 3.
She set another milestone on August 18, becoming the first French woman to perform a spacewalk. With NASA astronaut Anil Menon, she spent six hours and 23 minutes outside the ISS replacing a faulty communications antenna. Adenot then completed two more spacewalks, on August 25 and September 1; the third was with Jessica Meir.
Three spacewalks in two weeks gave Adenot the European women’s record for both the number of outings and total time spent working outside the station: 19 hours and 42 minutes. During the third outing, she and Meir performed the sixth all-female spacewalk among the 284 excursions carried out for ISS assembly and maintenance up to that point. Adenot became the fifth French citizen to perform a spacewalk, after Jean-Loup Chrétien, Jean-Pierre Haigneré, Philippe Perrin and Thomas Pesquet.
Stubborn bolts delayed Adenot’s first excursion, and a second spacewalk was scheduled to complete the antenna installation. She later said the spacewalks had become the highlight of her mission. Marc Dana, author of her biography, told Franceinfo that Adenot earned a third outing through her strong work on earlier assignments.
Her preparation for flight was unusually short. Only two years and ten months passed between the start of her training in April 2023 and her launch in February 2026, a record for a European astronaut. Adenot said her trainers initially doubted the schedule could work, but ground teams rearranged the timetable. She said the intense training taught her discipline, humility and the value of teamwork.