A STUDENT medic has just spent six weeks at the Nasa space camp in America as part of her studies.

Elizabeth Boléat, of Grouville, won one of only two medical awards given annually to UK medical students at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. Elizabeth (30) is currently in her final year of medical school at Guys, Kings and St Thomas’s in London and returned to the UK last month with some ‘amazing’ memories.

The competition for the award was organised in conjunction with University College London’s Centre for Altitude, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine. It covered an introduction to space flight physiology and medicine, along with the opportunity to witness medical preparations for space flight at first hand and participate in related projects.

‘I got to sit in the Discovery space shuttle, which had just come back from the international space station,’ she said. ‘Only a handful of British people have had the chance to sit in it. I also learned about space physiology, shuttle dynamics and about all the accidents that have happened and all the Russian stuff that has been kept under wraps.

‘Basically, we learned about everything that goes wrong with human parts in space.’
Elizabeth also got to try out a mission simulation and had to be ‘rescued’ by a helicopter while playing the character of a patient.

She went to school at Jersey College for Girls and Black’s Academy before gaining a first-class honours degree in chemistry at Kings College London. She then gained a PhD in chemical physics before she started her training as a medical doctor four years ago. Her medicine degree is funded by Jersey’s Lord Portsea Gift Fund, which was initially set up to help people to join the armed forces and civil services. Elizabeth had actually visited the space camp before, when she was five years old and on a family holiday with her parents, June and the late David, and her three siblings. ‘I had applied to work for NASA before, when I was doing my first degree,’ she said. ‘I have known about it for a while and have always been interested in space, and of course I have a physics background. I just thought it would be really cool to work for NASA!’

Her other interests include running – she recently took part in the London marathon – and she got engaged earlier this year to lawyer Robert Smith. She is going back to NASA in February next year to watch a shuttle launch, and although she would love to work for NASA, they only employ Americans. However, Elizabeth has a job lined up after her degree at St Thomas’s Hospital and hopes to specialise in anaesthetics or obstetrics and gynaecology.

• Picture: Elizabeth Bloéat was at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida