Overview
- The French ESA astronaut said training has intensified and confirmed a planned International Space Station departure on 15 February 2026 for roughly eight months.
- Her flight plan features microgravity studies prepared with CNES and Cadmos, including physiological monitoring, cognitive testing, autonomous ultrasound work and bio-contamination analysis.
- Baseline medical data collection is underway to study how spaceflight stressors affect the body with potential applications for understanding aging and improving treatments on Earth.
- A CNES-backed outreach program will mirror seed germination experiments in 4,500 classes in France, engaging about 260,000 students in parallel with her work on orbit.
- She would be the second French woman to travel to orbit, and she is slated to test EuroSuit, a new intravehicular safety suit prototype developed with Decathlon, Spartan Space and MEDES; one report also suggests Belgian astronaut Raphaël Liégeois could replace her at mission end, which awaits confirmation.