ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot returns to Europe after a 237-day first mission to the Space Station

17 October 2026

European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot has completed her first mission to the International Space Station, named epsilon, flown as part of Crew-12.
She launched on 13 February 2026 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
Splashdown took place on 8 October 2026 at 15:34 GMT, and she reached Cologne in Germany on 10 October 2026 at 04:21 GMT.
The mission lasted 237 days, 5 hours and 18 minutes.
Her crewmates were NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev.
She worked on 35 European payloads for about 218 hours, completed all epsilon-specific experiments proposed by the French space agency CNES, and completed all the ESA experiments assigned to her.
She is recovering at ESA's European Astronaut Centre in Cologne.