Watch Sophie Adenot return to Earth
On 7 October 2026, ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot and her Crew-12 crewmates will undock from the International Space Station at around 12:05 GMT/14:05 CEST to begin their journey back to Earth. ESA Web TV and ESA’s YouTube channel will stream the undocking and splashdown live. After undocking from the zenith-facing port of the Harmony module, Crew-12 will perform a series of burns to move their Dragon spacecraft away from the Station before heading home. Dragon’s heat shield protects the capsule from the hot plasma formed during re-entry, when the spacecraft faces extreme heat of as much as 1600°C.
The crew is planned to splash down off the coast of California on 8 October at 15:34 GMT/17:34 CEST, where a recovery team will pick up the four astronauts and return them to solid ground for the first time in nearly eight months. A few hours later, Sophie will fly to Cologne, Germany, where ESA’s European Astronaut Centre is located, and begin post-flight activities at EAC and the nearby :envihab facility operated by the German Aerospace Center.
Sophie launched into orbit on 13 February 2026 for εpsilon, her first space mission, together with NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev aboard Dragon Freedom. She is the second French female astronaut in history, after Claudie Haigneré, who first flew in August 1996, 30 years ago. Sophie was the first French woman to conduct a spacewalk and the second European woman to do so, after ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti in 2022. She completed three spacewalks in 14 days, spending a total of 19 hours and 42 minutes working outside the Station. The εpsilon mission is setting a new European record for the longest single spaceflight, with Sophie reaching 200 consecutive days aboard the Station on 3 September 2026. ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano held the previous record with his 200-day Beyond mission, followed closely by Thomas Pesquet’s 199-day Alpha mission.
Throughout εpsilon, Sophie carried out a wide range of European experiments spanning health research, materials science, biology, fluid physics, radiation physics and fundamental science. Alongside this broad research programme, she also helped test technologies for future exploration missions, including the new European exercise device E4D and in-orbit metal 3D printing, and supported commercial research payloads.