IRELAND has officially joined the Space Age after the launch of the first Irish satellite last Friday from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The EIRSAT-1 CubeSat project was pioneered by UCD students, including Maeve Doyle, who started working on the project while studying for her PhD in Astrophysics.

Maeve grew up helping out at her local show, Charleville, and, as her proud father Ian explained in their All In The Family double feature, his and wife Angie’s three children, Maeve, Eoin and Aoife, all first attended Charleville Show in a Moses basket. Under the guidance of mentors Eleanor Fleming, Nora Leahy and current show secretary Elaine Gould, Maeve’s summer job was helping in the Charleville Show office.

Ian’s grandfather Paddy Ball produced some legendary show hunter champions, such as Mighty Fine and the aptly-named Mighty Atom and the Paddy Ball Memorial Cup is presented at Charleville each June to the champion ridden hunter.

Now based in London in her new role as Fleet Operations Engineer with satellite communications company Eutelsat, Maeve was back in UCD last week, when she was one of the contributors to Rick O’Shea’s live podcast during the historic launch.