A County Mayo aeronautical engineer has said she is “just so excited” to be the first Irish person to travel to space.
Dr Norah Patten will be part of a research mission with Virgin Galactic’s commercial spacecraft Delta which is due to begin operating in 2026.
Along with two other researchers, she will travel into sub-orbit in the first 12 months of Delta’s operation to expand the understanding of fluid dynamics and biomedical research in space.
Dr Patten will conduct multiple experiments throughout the two-hour mission, which will be run by the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS).
On The Pat Kenny Show today, she said it will be a dream come true.
“The reaction to the announcement has been phenomenal and people who have followed my journey know this is not something that has happened overnight,” she said.
“I’ve been paving this path since I was a young girl growing up in the west of Ireland and I’m just so, so excited to share the news and to share everything that comes in the next few years.”
Dr Patten said her interest in space began at age 11 when on a family trip to the US.
“We visited NASA in Cleveland on the holiday - my dad has family there - and that was the spark of my space interest,” she said.
“My junior art project was about rockets and astronauts and I actually got a really lovely message from my old art teacher yesterday, Mr McDonagh, who said he never doubted this day would come.”
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After secondary school, Dr Patten studied aeronautical engineering at the University of Limerick where she completed a PhD in aerodynamics in 2011.
She gained a certificate in sub-orbital spaceflight from the International Space University in France in 2017 and joined the IIAS later that year.
Space mission
Dr Patten plans on “using every single moment” of the two-hour mission to “maximise the science”.
“We've done an awful lot of preparation for it already,” she said.
“Between now and our space flight, we'll be doing more microgravity research flights as a crew, and we’ll also be mapping out the choreography of who’s doing what.
“I've also done the dunker training in the US which is when you’re strapped into a mock-up of a helicopter, submerged under water, and flipped - you’re taught how to egress the vehicle safely and calmly.”
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Dr Patten described how the spacecraft works.
“When people think of a launch, they often think of your traditional vertical take-off rocket,” she said.
“With Virgin Galactic, it has a mothership that takes the spacecraft up to the drop in altitude where it’s released.
“Then the rocket motor fires up and the spacecraft travels into space.”
Joining Dr Patten on the mission will be Dr Shawna Pandya from Canada and Kellie Gerardi from the US.
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