Westmeath mans role in a major breakthrough for space exploration

When the lander Philae made an historic first soft landing on a comet today - in what is a considered to be a groundbreaking moment for space exploration - a Killucan man was at the centre of the action.

Laurence O'Rourke, a native of Riverstown, Killucan, is the European Space Agency's Lander System Engineer for the Rosetta mission, and one of the mission's two science operations coordinators.

Rosetta is a decade-long mission to land a probe on a comet over 500 million kilometres from the Earth, in order to obtain samples which will furnish scientists with more information about how planets are formed.

The Philae lander was launched in February 2004, and finally made its descent onto Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko earlier this morning, touching down at 3.30pm.

Laurence's first big project was delivered successfully in 1997, when he played a key role in the development of the TEAMSAT satellite, which was launched by the Ariane-5 rocket.

Laurence then spent a month at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), before relocating to the European Space Agency's Operation Centre at Darmstadt, Germany, where worked on the ENVISAT mission. ENVISAT is the world's largest environmental satellite, which was launched in 2002.

Following ENVISAT, Laurence became a spacecraft operations engineer on the Rosetta mission - dubbed "the Comet Chaser" by Laurence and his colleagues - where he had responsibility for the control of the rotations of the mothership carrying Philae.

The lander will now spend the next two years orbiting Comet 67P as it heads towards the sun.

In 2004, Laurence first began work on the European Space Astronomy Centre at Madrid, Spain, where he started work on the Herschel and Planck projects in early 2005. Both satellites were launched in 2009. Using the Herschel space observatory, Laurence and his colleague, Michael Küppers, published a paper earlier this year detailing their discovery of water on the minor planet Ceres.

Laurence is a past pupil of St Joseph's National School, Rathwire, and Garbally College, Co. Galway. He graduated from Maynooth in 1992 with a BSc in Physics and Maths, before completing a Masters in Engineering Science at University College, Cork in 1994.

One of a family of eight, Laurence has extensive family connections in Westmeath, and returns home to his native turf as often as he can.

In July, the Westmeath man had an asteroid - 1981 EJ5 - named after him, in recognition of his work on Herschel and Rosetta.