Carol Vorderman’s astronaut daughter shares gruelling Mars mission details

Carol Vorderman’s daughter Katie has been giving fascinating insight into her astronaut training as she prepares to spend almost a week in a cave working 25-hour days with no permission to change her socks or T-shirt.

Katie, 32, is undertaking the challenge as part of her job as an analog astronaut, which sees her play the role of an astronaut during simulated missions and field tests to help prepare for missions leaving Earth.

The PhD-holding scientist has clearly followed in her academic mum’s footsteps – who also has a love of flying, being a qualified pilot.

However, the Countdown star’s daughter is forging her own specific path this week after landing in Spain for the APICES mission, which will see her and her team simulate living in a lava tube on Mars.

Katie is Carol’s oldest child from her marriage with ex-husband Patrick King. They also share son Cameron, 26.

Proud mum Carol, 62, had shared a clip of Katie arriving at Astroland in Cantabria, Spain earlier this week, which is an aerospace start-up acting as a research organisation looking into future living capabilities on the red planet.

‘We are day one of training and we’re here at Astroland for some of our training, we’ve had medical training, we’ve gone through all these wearables that we have to wear to look at our heart rate, our breathing, that we have to wear 24/7,’ she explained to her followers.

‘There’s this camera that assesses your emotional state by recognising your face so they’re constantly monitoring our emotional response to things.

‘There’s also something to measure our skin to see our stress levels, which will be interesting, so when they simulate emergencies they can see how our bodies are physically responding which is pretty damn cool.’

On Saturday night, Katie jokingly marked her ‘last meal on ‘Earth’’ on her Instagram Stories with her crew, adding: ‘What a feast!!! Thank you @icee_space.’

Taking to her Stories again later on, before bed, she explained exactly what her and her fellow analog astronauts would be experiencing during their cave-based mission.

‘We’re going into the cave tomorrow for the five nights or something, but we’re working on a 25-hour day so every day we are doing an extra hour, so our body clocks are going to get screwed!’

Continuing to list the challenges, she added: ‘Then we’re also having to do tests to see how our mental performance changes as the sleep deprivation and circadian rhythms change – apparently there’s a huge difference.

‘I’m just about to do another aptitude test and then pack – and we’re having no showers, no sunlight, no proper food – it’s dehydrated stuff – no internet.

‘We’re also having to wear the same socks and shirt for a week without a shower – and we have to sleep in it and wear it.’

Katie then revealed the reasoning behind the clothing restriction as they were monitoring ‘how well UV light kills bacteria’, but as an official science experiment there, is a control group who aren’t allowed to use it.

 ‘So we are going to be so stinky!’ she joked.

On Sunday morning, the astronaut also gave a look at her bag she’d packed ahead of her mission to Mars as she revealed the layers she had to help cope with the 14 degree temperature and ‘very, very damp’ conditions.

Alongside her toothbrush she also explained: ‘Because part of the hygiene is part of the experimentation, we all have to wear the same deodorant and we have strict instructions as to how to use it. I don’t think it’s going to make any difference – we’re wearing the same shirt for a week!’

Mum Carol has been supporting her daughter’s uploads on Instagram, leaving a string of heart emoji in the comments when she first arrived in Spain, as well as praising her as ‘amazing’ when she first introduced day one of her training.

The TV star was also impressed by her daughter modelling a new analog astronaut suit and its technology that was being worked on, responding: ‘Wowsers. ???????? ‘

Carol has previously commented on her and Katie’s similarities, calling her and her daughter both science based and ‘geek girls’.

‘We fly planes and get excited about engines and molecules and are forever curious.

‘We also dance, laugh, enjoy mischief, cook, super fit, into fashion, love sport, go wild, travel. Media portrays geek girls very very very badly, like we’re an entirely different breed of woman who are incapable of the other things.’

She added: ‘I’m calling b******s on that. Apologies. Go geek girls… go ALL girls… you all have value.’

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