Astronaut Sophie Adenot: "From space we see the drought that is setting in on Earth"

French astronaut Sophie Adenot has drawn attention to the effects of environmental changes observed from space, stating that from aboard the International Space Station (ISS) one can see both the transformations produced by human activity on nature and the expansion of drought phenomena, informs AFP. During a videoconference organized with approximately one hundred students at the headquarters of the National Center for Space Studies in Toulouse, the astronaut on a mission on the ISS since February 2026 explained that the perspective offered by orbit allows for direct observation of the changes brought about to the environment. "From here, we really see the human footprint on nature, we see in particular the forests that are being transformed, we see the cultivated fields and we also see the drought that is setting in," Sophie Adenot told the students participating in the event.

The 43-year-old astronaut said one of the things that impressed her the most was the scale of water use in agriculture, visible from space through the circular irrigation systems used in many parts of the world. "The circular irrigation systems that farmers use are really impressive when you look at them from here,” she explained. The video conference, the only one scheduled during her current space mission, lasted about 20 minutes and gave students the opportunity to ask questions about life on board the ISS, communications between the station and Earth, and living conditions in weightlessness. Asked about sleeping in space, Sophie Adenot confessed that the experience turned out to be more comfortable than she expected. "When we got here, we had no idea how our sleep would be affected, but we actually sleep very, very well in space,” said the astronaut, explaining that she spends her nights in a sleeping bag attached to a wall of the station to avoid involuntary movement in weightlessness. Her testimony comes in a context in which the scientific community warns of the intensification of extreme weather events and the increasingly visible impact of human activities on ecosystems on a global scale.