Laurence O'Rourke from the European Space Agency for the Astronomical Science Group of Ireland

Laurence O’Rourke is a Native of Westmeath, with a double honours degree from Maynooth University and a Masters from the Tyndall institute in Cork. He has being working for the European Space Agency since 1996, located at 3 of its establishments (ESTEC, ESOC and currently ESAC in Madrid) as an Engineer and a Scientist. As an engineer, he has worked on 6 satellite missions for ESA during this time. As Rosetta Science Operations Manager he jointly leads a large team of scientists and engineers at ESAC. He was also the system engineer on the ESA side for the landing activities of Philae on the comet and headed the work of the Lander Search Group formed to find Philae on the surface of the comet; it was due to his detailed analysis that the famous image of Philae on the surface was successfully taken in September last year. Besides his day to day work on Rosetta, he also works on an exoplanet search mission called PLATO and an asteroid impact mission called AIM. As a scientist he publishes papers on asteroids and comets and based upon his Nature paper covering the first confirmed detection of water in the asteroid belt he was awarded an asteroid with his name from the IAU. He has given many talks on the Rosetta mission around Europe including two TEDx talks in Greece and Portugal, as well as talks more further afield in Chile and Bahrain.

The Astronomical Science Group of Ireland was founded in 1974 to encourage collaboration in astronomy and astrophysics between research groups from Ireland and Northern Ireland. Consisting of a number of affiliated universities and other organisations, the group is one of the oldest cross-border bodies on the island of Ireland. European Space Agency (ESA)NASAEuropean Southern Observatory (ESO) LOFAR