The European Space Agency has announced its new class of career astronauts, three men and two women, including Rosemary Coogan who was born in Northern Ireland.
Ms Coogan, who the ESA said was born in 1991, holds two Masters degrees from the University of Durham in Physics (2013) and Astronomy (2015).
She went on to complete a doctorate in Astronomy from the University of Sussex in 2019.
Alongside Ms Coogan, the agency chose France's Sophie Adenot, Spain's Pablo Alvarez Fernandez, Belgium's Raphael Liegeois and Switzerland's Marco Sieber.
The five, from five separate countries, were picked from more than 22,500 applicants to be Europe's next career astronauts.
At a ministerial council in Paris, the ESA also announced the first astronaut recruit with a physical disability, Britain's John McFall, who will join a separate "parastronaut" programme.
Following a comprehensive screening phase, 1,361 people were invited to phase two of ESA's astronaut selection, which was narrowed down to just over 400 applicants during phase three.
During ESA's last call for astronauts in 2008, the number of applicants who provided a medical certificate and finalised their online application form was 8,413.
Ms Adenot, 40, is an air helicopter test pilot with around 3,000 hours of flying experience.
Mr Sieber trained as a paratrooper with the Swiss Special Forces Commando before becoming a helicopter rescue doctor.
Mr McFall works as a trauma and orthopaedic specialist in the south of England, the ESA said.
He will work with ESA engineers to understand what changes in hardware are needed to open professional spaceflight to a wider group of qualified candidates, the agency said.
His leg was amputated after a motorcycle accident at the age of 18 and he went on to represent the UK as a Paralympic sprinter.
There was one woman, Italy's Samantha Cristoforetti, among the six astronauts selected in the ESA's previous 2009 astronaut class, which also included Britain's Timothy Peake and France's Thomas Pesquet.
