“You did an excellent job today”: Sophie Adenot completes her third spacewalk

Sophie Adenot has completed her third spacewalk in just two weeks, this time leading an all-female team outside the International Space Station. She left the station shortly after 12:45 GMT and was soon joined by NASA astronaut Jessica Meir.

The two women spent more than six and a half hours carrying out maintenance work. They replaced a retroreflector used to help spacecraft navigate during rendezvous and docking operations, as well as a high-definition camera mounted on the station’s truss.

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You did an excellent job today. You can be very proud of everything you accomplished.

“You did an excellent job today. You can be very proud of everything you accomplished,” flight director Chloe Mehring told them from NASA’s control center in Houston after they returned inside the orbital laboratory.

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You continue to inspire us all!

Adenot, the first French woman to conduct a spacewalk, has now logged 19 hours and 42 minutes outside the station. Before her, only four French men had completed spacewalks. Alice Rufo, France’s minister delegate for the armed forces, congratulated the astronaut, who is also an air force colonel, writing on X: “You continue to inspire us all!”

The spacewalk began without difficulty, although Adenot again reported increasing trouble with the left-shoulder joint of her spacesuit near the end. The problem appeared to involve an obstructed cable, but she reached the station without incident. Earlier, she collected samples from the airlock and her glove to check for possible microorganisms. After thanking NASA’s ground teams, Adenot described seeing Earth below her as a source of wonder: “Earth was truly magnificent, and it makes us feel even more human.”

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Earth was truly magnificent, and it makes us feel even more human.