ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot becomes first French woman to conduct a spacewalk

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Sophie Adenot will make spaceflight history today (Aug. 18).

The European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut will become the first French woman ever to conduct a spacewalk, an activity she'll undertake with NASA astronaut Anil Menon.

The duo are scheduled to step outside the International Space Station (ISS) for a 6.5-hour excursion today at around 8:35 a.m. EDT (1235 GMT). You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA. Coverage starts at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT).

Sophie Adenot is part of the European Space Agency's 2022 astronaut class. (Image credit: ESA) Adenot and Menon will "replace a space-to-ground antenna on the orbital complex," NASA officials wrote in a spacewalk preview .

"The antenna is a critical communications link NASA uses to transmit data, enabling high-speed communications between the Mission Control Center in Houston and the space station," they added.

This will be the second spacewalk for Menon; his first one, conducted with fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, occurred on Aug. 6 . During that extravehicular activity (EVA), a carbon dioxide sensor on Menon's spacesuit gave "an unexpected data reading," NASA officials wrote in an Aug. 7 update .

The sensor returned to normal after Menon doffed the suit, but NASA took some extra time to make sure there was no serious issue. As a result, the agency pushed his second spacewalk back a few days — from the originally planned Aug. 13 to today.

Today's spacewalk will be the 282nd overall in the long history of the ISS. Menon, who reached orbit on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on July 14 , will be "crewmember 1" on the EVA. Adenot — a member of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission , which reached the orbiting lab in February — will be "crewmember 2."

Adenot won't be the first French person overall to conduct an EVA. That distinction goes to Jean-Loup Chrétien, who performed a spacewalk outside the then-Soviet Union's Mir space station in 1988.

Other male French astronauts, including Philippe Perrin and Thomas Pesquet , later spacewalked outside the ISS. Pesquet also became the first French person to command an ISS mission, taking the reins in October 2021.