Nicholas Patrick, an Engineering graduate from the University of Cambridge, has set off on his second space mission.

Patrick, who works for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), first went into space in 2006, when astronauts fitted a backbone segment to the International Space Shuttle (ISS).

This time, he boarded the spaceship Endeavour, in order to help deliver two European-built modules to the ISS, which is worth £64 billion. The spaceship blasted off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, and the venture will last thirteen days.

Whilst robots are used to unload and place modules from visiting shuttles, Patrick was selected to spacewalk outside the space station in order to connect electrical, cooling, and communications lines to Endeavour.

In total, he will take three spacewalks, plugging in the new connecting Node 3, named Tranquillity, and thus providing extra room for crewmembers and control systems.

NASA plans to provide the crew with their first 360-degree view of the universe, through the cupola, weighing 1.6 tonnes, which is attached to the node.

The cupola, which is a type of control station, has six windows around its sides and one in its centre, and will thus provide a panoramic view of the Earth, celestial objects, and visiting spaceships.

After 12 years of construction and 140 spacewalks, the space station will be 98 per cent complete following this installation.

Terry Virts, Commander of Endeavour, commented: “I know we talk about the view a lot, but this one takes your breath away.”

The night before the spacewalk, Patrick and his co-worker, Robert Behnken, will camp out in the airlock in order to purge nitrogen from their bodies. This will prevent decomposition sickness that they may otherwise incur on the mission.

Patrick hopes that after this mission, he will be selected to take part in a long-duration mission on the ISS. However, the shuttle is due to stop flying at the end of the year, and so the opportunities for this kind of work will be dramatically reduced.

Cambridge students expressed pride in seeing one of their own achieve such success. According to Lukas Wong, a first-year Engineering student from Girton College, “About five hundred people have been in space; to achieve this feat once is impressive, but twice is even more so.”

He added, “This just goes to show how well Engineering at Cambridge sets you up for all sorts of career paths.”