The launch of the Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) with Sophie Adenot on board is scheduled for Friday. The French astronaut will participate in more than 200 experiments during her stay in space, a busy schedule to prepare for the next space missions and advance science on Earth.

Published on: 02/11/2026 - 12:44 Modified on: 02/12/2026 - 11:36

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The launch of the mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in which French astronaut Sophie Adenot will take part is scheduled to take place on Friday February 11. Orbiting for 25 years 400 km from Earth, the ISS is above all a unique scientific laboratory.

It is also a “fundamental criterion” in the selection of the projects carried out there, explains to AFP Sébastien Vincent-Bonnieu, scientific team leader “Usage and associated sciences” at the European Space Agency (ESA). “If we do research on the ISS, it’s because it’s the only way to do this type of experiment.” Or that linked to the space environment, an essential axis with a view to future long missions to the Moon or Mars.

Sophie Adenot will also undergo a series of neurosensory tests to assess the effect of her long stay in orbit on memory, risk-taking and emotion recognition. "An emotion is based on different characteristics on the physiological, cognitive, behavioral level... And in space, all of this is modified. This will allow us to see to what extent the perception of others can be altered, and therefore alter the ability to live in a group", indicated during a visit organized by Cnes in November, Benoît Belmont, researcher at the University of Lorraine.

Read alsoMission to the ISS: the flight of French astronaut Sophie Adenot postponed again

Full capacity

Preparing these experiments “is not easy,” CNES director Lionel Suchet recalled on this occasion. “Adapting scientific protocols to be carried out by an astronaut in weightlessness”, “operating equipment without convection”, is “something that we have learned over many years, thanks to our historic cooperation with the United States, the Soviet Union and then Russia, particularly on long-term flights”.

Twenty-five years after its commissioning, “we have developed all the major facilities and major instruments, we have a laboratory that is operating at full capacity and everyone wants to use it to the maximum” before the scheduled end of the ISS in 2030, underlines Sébastien Vincent-Bonnieu.

Also read: Sophie Adenot, French astronaut: “Space is everywhere in our lives”

A very wide variety of experiences

During her eight months on board, Sophie Adenot will participate in a “very, very wide variety of experiments on dozens of types of instruments” in the European Columbus laboratory, he specifies. An aeronautical engineer by training, the French astronaut took theoretical courses in biology, astrophysics and materials physics and was trained to collect blood samples or handle incubators and magnetic levitation ovens.

On its program: study of the effect of cosmic radiation on DNA and bones, observation of the Earth to capture phenomena that are difficult to observe from the ground or by satellites, installation of sensors to detect biocontaminations, experiments on emulsions...

On Earth, the data collected will be valuable for medical research. But also for manufacturers "often very interested in these fundamental aspects" and drawing applications from them in their own manufacturing processes, underlines Sébastien Vincent-Bonnieu, citing the chemical industries, the food industry, and materials manufacturers.

“Electricity was not discovered by improving the candle. Developing this amount of knowledge will not only allow us to improve what already exists, but also, perhaps, to discover completely different things,” he says.

Also read Sophie Adenot, French astronaut: “I clung to my childhood dreams”

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With AFP

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