Beyond the airlock: Sophie Adenot’s three spacewalks

French ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot went to space a rookie. She came home — nearly eight months later — as the European with the longest single spaceflight in history and three spacewalks under her belt, completed in a blistering 15 days. This is the story of those 19 hours and 42 minutes outside the International Space Station. From rookie to spacewalker Adenot launched on February 13, 2026, aboard a SpaceX Dragon with her Crew-12 crewmates: NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev. Her mission, named epsilon, was her first trip to space. By August, with half a year in orbit behind her, came the assignment every astronaut trains for and few get to do three times: extravehicular activity. Between August 18 and September 1, Adenot would exit the airlock three times — and by the third, she wouldn’t just be participating. She’d be leading. Three walks, three jobs The numbers tell a story of escalating endurance. EVA one, on August 18, ran 6 hours 23 minutes. EVA two, August 25: 6 hours 30 minutes. EVA three, September 1: 6 hours 49 minutes — each longer than the last, totaling 19 hours and 42 minutes in the vacuum. The work was pure station-keeping at its most demanding: replacing critical hardware, installing a new communications antenna, swapping out a spent HD camera, prepping the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer for a future upgrade, relocating foot restraints, and carrying out maintenance that keeps the quarter-century-old outpost alive. Every task performed in a pressurized suit, with Earth wheeling silently below. A stuck shoulder, 250 miles up Spacewalking is unforgiving, and the crew got a reminder on the final EVA. Toward the end of the spacewalk, Adenot reported losing mobility in her left shoulder joint. Mission Control made the cautious call: stay put until Meir could reach her. Meir unzipped part of Adenot’s suit arm assembly, found the culprit — a cable snagged between the shoulder insulation and the rotation joint, held by nothing but friction — and freed it. They finished the EVA and came home through the airlock together. It’s the kind of calm, competent problem-solving that never makes the highlight reel but defines the job. History made The milestones stacked up fast. Her first EVA made Adenot the first French woman ever to perform a spacewalk. Her third made her EV1 — the lead spacewalker — and the outing with Meir was the sixth all-female spacewalk in history and the 284th spacewalk supporting the station. On September 3, she passed 200 days in orbit, becoming the European astronaut with the longest single spaceflight. The road home After nearly eight months aboard the ISS, Adenot is due back on Earth…