Katie Vorderman, Carol Vorderman’s daughter, has been providing intriguing insights into her astronaut training as she prepares to spend nearly a week in a cave working 25-hour days with no permission to change her socks or T-shirt.
Katie, 32, is taking on the task as part of her profession as an analogue astronaut, which requires her to act as an astronaut during simulated trips and field testing in order to prepare for missions that would leave Earth.
The PhD-holding scientist has certainly followed in the footsteps of her scholarly mother, who also enjoys flying and is a trained pilot.
The Countdown star’s daughter, on the other hand, is creating her own path this week after landing in Spain for the APICES expedition, in which she and her crew will mimic living in a lava tube on Mars.
Carol’s oldest child from her marriage to ex-husband Patrick King is Katie. Cameron, their 26-year-old son, is also theirs.
Carol, Katie’s proud mother, released a video of Katie arriving to Astroland in Cantabria, Spain, earlier this week. Astroland is an aeronautical start-up that acts as a research organisation researching into future living prospects on Mars.
‘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.’
Later, before bed, she returned to her Stories to describe exactly what she and her fellow analogue astronauts would be experiencing throughout their cave-based trip.
‘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 explained that they were tracking ‘how well UV light kills bacteria,’ but as an official science experiment, there is a control group that isn’t permitted 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!’
Carol has been supportive of her daughter’s Instagram posts, sending a series of heart emoji in the comments when she first arrived in Spain and praised her as ‘wonderful’ when she first debuted day one of her training.
The TV actress was particularly delighted by her daughter’s modelling of a new analogue astronaut suit and its technology, commenting, ‘Wowsers. 👏👏 ‘
Carol has previously commented on her and Katie’s similarities, dubbing her and her daughter “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.’
