ISS mission: 'It's really exciting to see this renewal of French women in space'

Sophie Adenot was also just the second French woman to go to space and the first to conduct a spacewalk, milestones that remain noteworthy in an industry long dominated by men. For more on the history of women and space travel, we can speak to Laurent Desupeux, a chemical propulsion engineer with the European Space Agency. Laurent, good morning and thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. Good morning, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. A lot has been made here in France about Sophie Adenot as being just the second French woman in space. What did that represent to you as someone who works in the industry? Oh, it was so exciting, especially since the first woman in space, Claudine Hureau was launched more than 20 years ago as a doctor on the Mir station. So not even on the ISS, not even on the International Space Station. As you just said, no spacewalk for her, sadly. So it's really exciting to see this renewal of a French woman in space. Yeah, I know a couple of years ago, you wrote an article about the history of women in space exploration. You say it started with a group called the Mercury 13. I'm wondering if you can tell about them. Well, for their defense, it started before the Mercury 13. I mean, you can already talk about the computers and skirts, as we say, you know, typically in the famous book and then film Hidden Figures. But yeah, Mercury 13 is a super interesting part of the NASA history. It was launched by Dr. Lovelace, the doctor responsible for the Mercury 7, so the seven male astronauts, the first one flew to space, the first American one flew to space, and he selected 25 women, pulled them through the exact same test that the men had to face, and ended up with 13 brilliant women, mostly pilots, who passed with flying colours, the same tests as men. Sadly, at this time, to be a NASA astronaut, you had to be military, and of course women were not allowed back then and that was like 1960, 1959, from 1959 to 1961 and yeah so the program had to stop there which was very frustrating. Yeah so you mentioned that that old military requirement for astronauts was kind of one of the first things that prevented women from getting into the industry. What have some of the other obstacles been over the years? There's an anecdote that I really love you know it's quite famous. 20 years later they finally sent a woman to space Sally Ride and she went for one week and those brilliant engineers at NASA asked her how many tampons do you need for a week 100 so you know it's this is just a fun little anecdote but yes i'm gonna have to have faced more issues over the years you know the one that comes to mind is the most frustrating one uh the first all-female spacewalk was supposed to happen 10 years ago and it was stopped because there was no two spacesuits at the right size so you know now now this problem has been fixed and there's been six all female EVA extra vehicular activity and including two three with Sophia no okay yeah so lots of you know gear issues assumptions about women i'm glad that you brought in the tampon story i was hoping that that would come up uh how does space travel stand now how close are the various space agencies getting to gender parity uh they are there actually i'm happy to report uh in september 2025 NASA announced the latest class of astronauts and for the first time we had more women than men six women four or five men um so that's already progress and in ESA too, the European Space Agency, they selected in 2022 the last class of astronauts, and we nearly had parity. We had 8 women for 9 men. So we are getting there. Okay, so that's exciting to hear in terms of astronauts that are in training. What about sort of behind-the-scenes roles? Is equality still far away when it comes to that? There's a lot of women in this field. On my own very small scale, I work for the European Space Agency. I joined four years ago, and I was the only woman in my team, and now we're five or six. So that's a very small team nonetheless, but it's nice to see the power dynamics changing. Can you talk more about what you do? Would you ever be someone who could consider becoming an astronaut? I would, but the selection is really rough. I would adore becoming an astronaut, but there's just so many brilliant, brilliant people here at ESA and outside that the selection is rough. You know, the last selection of astronauts, there was 25,000 applicants for only, as I told you, about 20 people. So that's a rough job to get. Well, if you want to go for it, Lauren, we would we would support you. So there are some scientific arguments I was reading about the other day that are actually in favor of sending women to space rather than men. There were two recent studies, one in 2023 and one in 2024, that found that women's bodies were actually more efficient and perhaps required fewer resources. Have you heard about those studies? Is that something that you think space agencies are taking into consideration? Yeah, you know, every single kilo is accounted for during a launch. So, you know, women are lighter. It's like taking an as-powerful computer with a lighter weight. So why not? Why wouldn't you? And there's another aspect is that women are more open about mental health. You know, if they are mentally struggling, they'll be more likely to come towards the psychologist on the ground than men, typically. How long do you think it's going to be before we see an all-female crew? God. um it's it's frustrating that we haven't been there already to be honest and uh looking at the Artemis 3 mission which doesn't have a single woman was a bit rough I'll be I'll be honest um we'll see especially with the ISS retiring in 2030 it's I'm not certain we'll see it on the ISS sadly there are upcoming milestones for women I believe though in space notably that Artemis mission can you maybe talk about some of those I mean I know that maybe that there's not a single women included for some of them but but others i think the hope is to put a woman on the moon yes exactly that's the whole name of the mission you know artemis is a sister the goddess sister of apollo that's the whole point of naming it artemis which is you know a crucial detail showing also nasa's will to put a woman on the moon and uh you know i'm i'm mentioning artemis 3 and my frustration towards that um but artemis 1 had Christina Koch as the mission specialist brilliant NASA astronauts who became the first women to orbit the moon so there is progress and the Artemis 4 crew has not been announced yet but they will excuse me part of that crew will land on the moon so we can only hope that there will be at least one woman on that crew. Alright we will be looking ahead to that Lauren, thank you again so much for speaking to us today that was Lauren Delsupeks a chemical propulsion engineer with at the European Space Agency.