Astronaut Pedro Duque named Spain’s science minister

Spain’s first astronaut, Pedro Duque, has been named minister of science by the country’s new Socialist government.

Prime Minister and self-labelled feminist Pedro Sánchez is expected to appoint a women-majority cabinet, in contrast to the male-dominated executives of ousted PM Mariano Rajoy.

Women will take the deputy premiership, and the economy and finance portfolios.

Mr Duque, 55, last went to space in 2003 as part of an International Space Station (ISS) mission.

An aeronautical engineer with three children, he is reportedly prone to quoting the late British science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke.

Mr Duque was selected by the European Space Agency’s astronaut corps in 1992 and travelled to space for the first time in 1998, when he joined Nasa’s STS-95 mission from Cape Canaveral. Mr Duque served as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on the nine-day mission.

BBC