# First Frenchwoman in Space Steps Outside

An episode of [Astronomy Daily: Latest Space News](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1642258990), 19 Aug 2026, 12 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/track/op3.dev/e/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/74309982/first_frenchwoman_in_space_steps_outside.mp3

Anna and Avery cover Sophie Adenot becoming the first French woman ever to conduct a spacewalk — a historic EVA that ran into some antenna trouble along the way. Plus: a trillion-mile river of gas that explains why some planetary systems end up tilted, an honest update on Starship's Ship 40 as it turns out the recovery saga wasn't quite finished, and SpaceX quietly closing in on 11,000 satellites in orbit. Full show notes: Today's episode — S05E171, Wednesday August 19, 2026: Main story: First Frenchwoman to spacewalk. ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot became the first French woman ever to conduct a spacewalk on August 18, working alongside NASA's Anil Menon (on his second EVA, delayed from August 13 after a carbon dioxide sensor flag on his first spacewalk August 6). The pair set out to replace one of the station's space-to-ground antennas, but the job took longer than planned — after 6 hours and 23 minutes (the station's 282nd spacewalk overall), controllers called it before the swap was fully complete. The old antenna is secured but not stowed; the new one remains on its storage platform. Another spacewalk is scheduled for next Tuesday to finish the job. France's first-ever spacewalk was performed by Jean-Loup Chrétien on Mir in 1988. A trillion-mile river of gas explains tilted planets. Astronomers led by Maria Galloway-Sprietsma (University of Florida), with advisor Jaehan Bae and international collaborators, used the ALMA telescope in Chile to trace a gas streamer roughly 1.2 trillion miles (0.2 light-years) long feeding into the young triple-star system GW Orionis, 1,300 light-years away in Orion. The streamer's infall angle closely matches the tilt of the system's warped outer disk ring, offering a mechanism for why some planetary systems end up with misaligned or even retrograde orbits. Published August 6 in The Astronomical Journal. Correction/update: Ship 40's journey continues. Last episode we reported Starship's Ship 40 recovery as complete after its intact splashdown and tow toward Western Australia. Fuller reporting since shows the ship was towed further and arrived, as of August 18, in sheltered waters off Christmas Island after 24 days and 400+ km adrift — with SpaceX now planning to transport it back to Starbase, Texas, for full inspection. Musk has cited the intact recovery as strengthening the case for attempting a tower catch of a returning ship as early as Flight 14. SpaceX quietly passes 11,000 satellites. Tuesday night's Starlink 17-50 launch from Vandenberg — SpaceX's 100th mission of 2026 overall (97th Falcon 9 flight of the year) — added 24 more satellites, pushing the Starlink constellation to nearly 11,000 operational satellites. Booster B1097 flew for the 12th time, targeting a droneship landing in the Pacific. Tonight's sky (well, tomorrow's predawn sky): Saturn is showing off a "moon parade" before dawn, its unusually narrow, shallowly tilted rings (7.5°) lining up major moons — Titan, Rhea, Tethys, Dione and, in larger scopes, Iapetus and Enceladus — almost in a straight row. This evening, catch a waxing crescent Moon. Links & sources: • Space.com — Watch European astronaut make history during spacewalk today • Spaceflight Now — Astronauts remove failed antenna; run out of time to install a spare • France 24 — Sophie Adenot set to become first French female astronaut to venture outside ISS • Space.com — A 'river' of cosmic gas 1 trillion miles long sent planets in the Orion constellation into tilted orbits • University of Florida News — Cosmic river of gas may have tilted a young planetary system in Orion constellation • ALMA Observatory — ALMA Captures a Trillion-Mile Stream Feeding the Triple-Star System GW Orionis • NASASpaceFlight.com — Ship 40 arrives at Christmas Island, plans return to Starbase • Space.com — Starship lives! SpaceX craft arrives at Christmas Island after 24-day ocean ordeal • Space.com — SpaceX launches its 100th mission of the year, sends Starlink satellites to orbit •…

## Transcript

[0:00] Anna: Hey everyone. Welcome back to Astronomy
[0:03] AstroDailyPod. I'm Anna.
[0:04] Avery: And I'm, um, avery. It's Wednesday, August
[0:07] 19th, series five, episode
[0:09] 171.
[0:10] Anna: We've got a genuinely historic one to lead
[0:13] with today.
[0:14] A spacewalk outside the space station that
[0:16] didn't go entirely to plan, but
[0:19] still made history.
[0:20] Avery: First French woman to ever walk in space.
[0:23] Then it got complicated.
[0:25] Anna: Then a trillion mile river of gas that's
[0:28] been quietly bending a baby solar system out
[0:30] of shape. An update on a storey we thought
[0:33] we'd closed last episode. And SpaceX
[0:36] quietly cruising past a satellite milestone
[0:38] that would have sounded like science fiction
[0:40] a decade ago.
[0:42] Avery: Plus tonight. Well, actually tomorrow morning
[0:44] before dawn. One of the best reasons all year
[0:47] to drag a telescope outside.
[0:48] Anna: Lots to get through. Let's get into it.
[0:51] Avery: So yesterday, August 18, ESA astronaut
[0:54] Sophie Edeno, uh, became the first French
[0:56] woman ever to conduct a spacewalk, which is
[0:59] Anna: worth sitting with for a second. France has
[1:01] had astronauts in space since the 1980s,
[1:04] and women astronauts too. But nobody from
[1:07] France had actually stepped outside and
[1:09] worked in a suit until yesterday. Jean Luc
[1:12] chretien did France's first spacewalk, all
[1:15] the way back in 1988 on Mir.
[1:18] It took almost 40 years for a French woman to
[1:21] get that chance.
[1:22] Avery: Who was she out there with?
[1:24] Anna: NASA's Anil Menon. This was actually his
[1:26] second EVA. His first back on August
[1:29] 6th got a bit tense when his suit flagged an
[1:32] unexpected carbon dioxide sensor reading. It
[1:35] came back to normal. But out of caution, the
[1:37] follow up spacewalk got pushed from August
[1:40] 13th to the 18th while they double checked
[1:42] everything.
[1:43] Avery: Good call, given what suits are for. So what
[1:46] were they actually out there to do?
[1:47] Anna: Replace one of the station's space to ground
[1:50] antennas. NASA calls it a scant. It's a
[1:53] critical communications link that lets
[1:55] mission control in Houston talk to the
[1:57] station at high speed. The ISS carries
[2:00] two for redundancy. You only strictly need
[2:03] one working, but managers like having a
[2:05] spare.
[2:06] Avery: So this was meant to be a fairly routine
[2:08] swap.
[2:08] Anna: That was the plan. Six and a half hours were
[2:11] budgeted. They got the old failed antenna
[2:14] disconnected, freeing the power and data
[2:16] cables working in the locking pins,
[2:18] unbolting the whole assembly. But every one
[2:21] of those steps took longer than expected. A
[2:24] lot of it came down to just brute physical
[2:26] effort with a ratchet wrench in a pressurised
[2:28] suit.
[2:29] Avery: And, um, they ran out of time.
[2:31] Anna: They ran out of time. 6 hours
[2:33] 23 minutes in the
[2:35] 282nd spacewalk in Station history.
[2:38] For the record, flight controllers made the
[2:41] call not to push for the full task Though the
[2:43] failed antenna is secured near its mounting
[2:46] boom rather than fully stowed, and the
[2:48] replacement antenna is still sitting on its
[2:50] storage platform uninstalled.
[2:53] Avery: So it's a historic spacewalk with an asterisk
[2:55] on the actual job list.
[2:57] Anna: Pretty much. The good news is nothing about
[2:59] this is urgent. The working antenna is still
[3:02] doing its job, so the station isn't missing
[3:04] any communication capability. NASA's already
[3:07] got another spacewalk scheduled next Tuesday
[3:10] and controllers are figuring out whether to
[3:12] prioritise finishing this antenna swap then
[3:15] or push it to a later EVA in favour of
[3:18] other planned work.
[3:19] Avery: Uh, but the headline stands. Regardless of
[3:21] how the antenna paperwork shakes out, it
[3:24] does.
[3:24] Anna: First, French woman outside the station doing
[3:27] real hands on maintenance work in a suit
[3:29] that's basically its own spacecraft. That's
[3:32] the storey antenna or no antenna. Next
[3:35] up, a storey about why some planetary
[3:37] systems end up lopsided instead of neat
[3:40] and orderly like ours.
[3:42] Avery: Neat and orderly is relative, but sure, go
[3:45] on there.
[3:46] Anna: So there's a young triple system called
[3:49] GW Orionis, about 1300
[3:52] light years away in the constellation Orion.
[3:55] It's a favourite target for astronomers
[3:57] because it's got a genuinely strange
[4:00] warped protoplanetary disc, the ring
[4:03] of gas and dust where planets are forming,
[4:05] split into several misaligned rings
[4:08] instead of one flat disc like you'd expect.
[4:11] Avery: And now we know why.
[4:13] Anna: We've got a, uh, very strong new answer. A
[4:16] team led by Maria M. Galloway Spritsma, a
[4:19] PhD student at the University of Florida,
[4:22] working with her advisor Jehan they and
[4:24] collaborators from the Max Planck Institute
[4:26] for Astronomy, University of Galway and Queen
[4:29] Mary London University, used the ALMA
[4:32] Telescope Array in Chile to trace a
[4:35] stream of gas flowing into the system from
[4:38] outside.
[4:39] Avery: How big a stream are we talking about?
[4:42] Anna: 1.2 trillion miles long.
[4:44] That's roughly 0.2 light years, or
[4:47] 12,600 astronomical
[4:50] units, feeding in from well beyond the system
[4:53] itself. They traced it using carbon
[4:55] monoxide, because the molecular hydrogen that
[4:58] actually makes up most of the gas is
[5:00] invisible at radio wavelengths. CO
[5:03] acts as a stand in tracer
[5:05] Avery: and this stream is what's warping the disc.
[5:08] Anna: That's the finding when the team modelled how
[5:11] the streamer's gas falls into the system. The
[5:14] angle it comes in at lines up closely with
[5:16] the tilt of the disc's outer ring, the one
[5:19] furthest out roughly 31.6
[5:22] billion miles from the centre, well beyond
[5:24] the two inner rings at, uh, 4.1 and
[5:27] 17.4 billion miles. The
[5:30] streamer is essentially shoving the outer
[5:32] edge of the disc out of alignment with the
[5:35] rest of the so this
[5:36] Avery: isn't just a quirky one off storey about one
[5:39] weird system.
[5:40] Anna: That's exactly the bigger point. Bay put
[5:43] it. If these gas streamers turn out to
[5:46] be common around young stars, they'd
[5:48] naturally explain why planets don't always
[5:51] end up in neat, orderly orbits like our solar
[5:54] systems. They can come out with, in his
[5:57] words, much, much more random
[5:59] orientations.
[6:01] Avery: So this could be a piece of the puzzle for
[6:03] all those exoplanets we found with weirdly
[6:05] tilted or even backwards orbits.
[6:08] Anna: Exactly that puzzle. The results were
[6:10] published August 6th in the Astronomical
[6:13] Journal, and the team's next step is a
[6:15] systematic survey of young stars to see just
[6:18] how common these streamers actually are.
[6:21] Avery: From, um. Why is this one system so messy
[6:24] to maybe messy is just normal
[6:27] Cosmic
[6:28] Anna: order might be the exception, not the rule.
[6:31] Avery: Quick follow up now, and a bit of a
[6:33] correction to how we left things last
[6:34] episode. Let's say we have some new
[6:36] information, right?
[6:37] Anna: On Tuesday's Show we said SpaceX had
[6:40] completed recovery of Starship's ship 40,
[6:43] which splashed down intact in the Indian
[6:45] Ocean and got towed towards Western
[6:48] Australia. Turns out that wasn't
[6:51] quite the end of the storey.
[6:52] Avery: What have we got wrong? Or let's say, what's
[6:55] changed?
[6:56] Anna: Nothing we said was fabricated. The ship
[6:58] really was secured and under control, which
[7:01] is the initial reporting we had captured. But
[7:04] the fuller picture that's emerged since is
[7:06] that ship 40 wasn't parked at a mainland
[7:09] Australian port. It's been under a much
[7:11] longer tow and as of yesterday, August
[7:14] 18, it arrived in sheltered waters off
[7:17] Christmas island, the Australian territory,
[7:20] out in the eastern Indian Ocean.
[7:22] Avery: After how long a drift? Total?
[7:24] Anna: 24 days and more than 400 kilometres
[7:27] of drift, all told, since that July
[7:30] 24th splashdown on Flight 13.
[7:33] Avery: So why stop at Christmas island instead of
[7:35] going straight to a mainland port?
[7:37] Anna: Sheltered water. It gives SpaceX's
[7:40] engineers, who are now travelling out to the
[7:42] site, a calm place to do a closer inspection
[7:45] and stabilise the vehicle for the next leg of
[7:48] the journey, which is transporting it all the
[7:50] way back to Starbase in Texas for full
[7:53] teardown and analysis. Exactly how
[7:56] they'll move a 171 foot stainless steel
[7:58] rocket that far hasn't been detailed yet.
[8:02] Avery: And Musk's take on all this?
[8:04] Anna: He's framed the intact recovery as
[8:07] valuable data that would otherwise have been
[8:09] lost, and said it strengthens the case for
[8:12] attempting an actual tower catch of a
[8:14] returning ship as early as Flight 14.
[8:17] Avery: Though, uh, the saga isn't closed after all.
[8:20] Just entered a quieter chapter.
[8:22] Anna: Consider this the correction recovered and
[8:25] stable? Yes. Home free? Not yet.
[8:28] We'll flag it again if there's a real
[8:30] resolution.
[8:31] Last storey and a quick one. SpaceX
[8:34] hit a couple of milestones at once on Tuesday
[8:37] night.
[8:38] Avery: Lay it on us.
[8:39] Anna: Tuesday night's Starlink 1750
[8:42] mission lifted off from Vandenberg Space
[8:44] Force Base in California, sending up 24
[8:47] more broadband satellites. That launch was
[8:50] SpaceX's 97th Falcon 9 flight of
[8:53] the year and its 100th mission overall
[8:56] for 2026. All types of missions
[8:58] combined.
[9:00] Avery: Hundred missions with four months of the year
[9:02] still to go.
[9:03] Anna: And with those 24 new satellites, the
[9:06] Starlink Constellation is now sitting at
[9:09] nearly 11,000 operational satellites
[9:12] in orbit, a scale that genuinely didn't
[9:14] exist as a concept in spaceflight a decade
[9:17] ago.
[9:18] Avery: What about the booster?
[9:19] Anna: Anna B1097, flying for the
[9:22] 12th time, targeted a landing on the drone
[9:24] ship. Of course I still love you. Out in the
[9:26] Pacific, about eight and a half minutes after
[9:28] liftoff, that booster's flown everything from
[9:31] The Twilight and Transporter 17 rideshare
[9:34] missions to Sentinel 6B and A batch of
[9:37] previous Starlink launches.
[9:39] Avery: At this point, a Starlink launch barely makes
[9:41] headlines on its own merits. But quietly
[9:44] approaching 11,000 satellites is the kind of
[9:46] number that sneaks up on you.
[9:48] Anna: It really is one of those stats that's easy
[9:50] to lose track of because the launches
[9:53] themselves have become so routine, worth
[9:55] pausing on occasionally.
[9:57] Avery: Finally, a quick one before we go. And this
[10:00] one's worth setting an early
[10:01] Anna: alarm for if you're up before dawn tomorrow
[10:04] morning. Saturn is putting on one of the best
[10:06] views of the year. Its rings are unusually
[10:09] narrow and shallowly tilted right now, only
[10:12] about 7.5 degrees relative to us,
[10:15] which lines its major moons up almost in
[10:18] a straight row extending out from the
[10:20] planet's equator. Astronomers have taken to
[10:23] calling it a moon parade. What can you
[10:25] actually pick out with a small telescope?
[10:28] Titan is easy. It's the brightest at
[10:31] magnitude 8.4. Step up
[10:34] to a 4 to 6 inch scope and you can pick out
[10:36] Rhea Thetis and Dione as well. If
[10:39] you've got an 8 to 10 inch instrument,
[10:41] IAPetus and Enceladus come into range too.
[10:45] Saturn itself sits in the south southeast in
[10:48] the hours before sunrise. Medium to high
[10:50] magnification, somewhere around
[10:52] 120-200x, gives you the best
[10:55] view of the whole lineup.
[10:57] Avery: And, um, if you're out earlier tonight
[10:58] Anna: before bed, you'll catch a waxing crescent
[11:01] moon in the evening sky. Nothing dramatic,
[11:04] but a nice preview before the real show rolls
[11:06] around. Before dawn.
[11:08] Okay, that's today's episode. A history
[11:11] making slightly unfinished spacewalk from
[11:13] Sophie Adineau and Anil Menon, a trillion
[11:16] mile river of gas explaining why some planets
[11:19] end up tilted, an update on Starship
[11:22] ship 40 as it makes its way to Christmas
[11:24] island and SpaceX quietly closing in
[11:27] on 11,000 satellites in orbit.
[11:30] Avery: Plus Saturn's moon parade before dawn
[11:32] tomorrow. If you can drag yourself out of bed
[11:34] for it.
[11:35] Anna: If you enjoyed today's episode, the best
[11:37] thing you can do for us is leave a rating or
[11:40] review wherever you're listening and share it
[11:42] with a fellow space nerd. Full Show Notes,
[11:45] sources and links for every storey we cover
[11:47] today are @astronomydaily IO
[11:51] and you can find us on social media. We're
[11:53] astrodaily pod pretty much everywhere.
[11:56] Avery: We'll be back tomorrow with more from the
[11:58] world of space and astronomy. Until then,
[12:01] keep looking up.
[12:02] Anna: See you next time. Clear skies everyone.
[12:16] Avery: Mhm.
[12:16] Anna: Soul.

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