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VIDEO: RAF Fylingdales monitors launch of Endeavour space shuttle
A NORTH Yorkshire-born astronaut, inspired by Whitby's Captain James Cook, has blasted off on the space shuttle Endeavour on one of the programme's last scheduled missions.
Dr Nicholas Patrick (45), originally from Saltburn-by-the-Sea, was one of the six crew on board the shuttle for the pre-dawn launch from Cape Kennedy in Florida on Tuesday.
The launch was the last one to take place in darkness with only four more shuttle flights remaining.
RAF Fylingdales monitored the shuttle 18 minutes after it blasted off, looking for the separation between the shuttle and its rockets.
Flight officer Jason Reuben, speaking after the launch, said: "We monitor the shuttle looking for the two pieces and send all the data back to NASA as it comes in.
"The shuttle will take two days to reach the international space station as the shuttle has to slow itself down so they do not collide."
He said the launch had gone very well after the 24-hour delay.
Endeavour is carrying a new room for the International Space Station and an observation deck.
These are the last major pieces for the orbiting complex.
The shuttle reached the space station yesterday.
Dr Patrick is part of a team who will spend 13 days working on the International Space Station.
He is part of a small band of British-born astronauts to have made it into space. In 2006 he was part of a seven-member Discovery crew who blasted off for a 12-day mission to the International Space Station. He has already logged 308 hours in space.
Married with three children, Dr Patrick lives in Connecticut, having become a US citizen in 1994.
But his desire to explore dates back to his early years in Yorkshire when he lived close to where Captain James Cook once resided.
"We would go walking in the Yorkshire Moors, and go to see the monument that was erected to him. That's one of my earliest memories, actually, of wanting to be an explorer," he said in a Nasa interview.
The latest mission, which will feature three spacewalks, comes as the US prepares to scale back its space programme.
The White House has announced it is to axe the Constellation mission which had aimed to take space travellers back to the moon. Much of the money saved in the process will be directed toward new rocket technology research, the US administration has said, but there is likely to be funding cuts.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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