An Irish scientist is hoping her research on bogs will help NASA work out how to grow plants without the need for soil.
Ms Michelle McKeon is travelling to Cape Canaveral today to spend a year with the organisation.
The lecturer - who hopes to become Ireland's first space traveller - has been examining plants that grow on Clara bog in Co Offaly.
NASA will be using Ms McKeon's knowledge in their Mars colonisation project.
If the project is successful she could eventually train as a mission specialist astronaut and take part in space exploration missions.
Ms McKeon is an environmental lecturer at the Limerick Institute of Technology and applied for a place on NASA's training programme five years ago.
Initially she was turned down on the grounds that she was not a US citizen.
But NASA officials decided to take her on when they looked at her hydroponics work - the science of growing plants without soil.
Details are to be announced of 12 other Irish graduates who will spend six weeks with NASA.
