Great news for two members of ESA’s newest class of astronauts: Sophie Adenot and Raphaël Liégeois are officially assigned to their first missions to the International Space Station (ISS).
Big smiles and happy faces lit up the venue in Brussels as the ESA Director General announced the first two astronaut missions for the new ESA astronaut class of 2022 on 22 May, the opening day of the Space Council.
Right now, Sophie and Raphaël are at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, USA, for their pre-assignment training. They are set to fly in 2026, potentially meeting for a few days in space, with Sophie aiming for a flight in spring and Raphaël in autumn.
But before they can fly to space, the new ESA astronauts are entering a pre-assignment training where they build on what they’ve learned. They will get more hands-on experience with Space Station modules and systems and learn how to perform scientific experiments in ESA’s Columbus laboratory. This training is conducted with international astronaut classes at all partner sites.
Once their missions and crew are confirmed, Sophie and Raphaël will transition to assigned crew training, focusing on specific mission goals and training closely with their assigned ISS crewmembers.
Sophie, from France, and Raphaël, from Belgium, were selected during the last ESA astronaut selection in 2022 from over 22 500 applicants from ESA Member States, alongside fellow ESA astronauts Pablo Álvarez Fernández from Spain, Rosemary Coogan from the UK and Marco Sieber from Switzerland.
In total, 17 individuals were chosen for the astronaut class of 2022, including 12 members of the ESA astronaut reserve and the five astronaut candidates, who began their basic training at ESA’s European Astronaut Centre in Germany in April 2023.
The 2022 class of ESA astronauts, called The Hoppers, completed an intensive one-year programme covering spacecraft systems, spacewalking, flight engineering, robotics, life support systems, survival, and medical training. They officially graduated as ESA astronauts on 22 April 2024, making them eligible for spaceflight.
Once on the International Space Station, ESA astronauts will conduct science and medical research, Earth observation, outreach activities, as well as maintenance and operational tasks. All five new European astronauts will be assigned to missions to the Space Station by 2030 to carry out scientific experiments, many of which come from Europe.
The next European adventure starts off with our French-Belgian duo, Sophie and Raphaël.