The wife of North-East astronaut Dr Nicholas Patrick has spoken exclusively to The Northern Echo about the emotional moment she watched her husband launch into space. Claire Burbage reports.

STANDING with her three children to witness the launch of the space shuttle Discovery was a "fantastic experience", said Dr Rosanna Palomino

On board was her 42-year-old husband whose first message from space was "what a fantastic ride".

Dr Nicholas Patrick, originally from Saltburn, east Cleveland, became the first person from the North-East to go into space following the successful launch on Sunday.

He was one of the seven crew members on board the space shuttle as it blasted off from Kennedy Space Centre, in Florida.

During the mission, Dr Patrick and the crew will deliver a £5.6m addition to the space lab and bring home one of the space station's three crew members, German astronaut Thomas Reiter.

He will be replaced by US astronaut Sunita Williams, who will stay for six months.

Dr Patrick's three children - aged four, three and two months - stood with their mother on the roof of the space centre just three miles from the shuttle as they witnessed the dramatic take-off.

And moments after the launch, their three-year-old daughter asked if she could see it all over again.

Speaking exclusively to The Northern Echo, Dr Palomino said: "It has been a fantastic experience. We were able to go to the launch with our three kids. The older two seemed to be aware of what was going on. I was pretty busy with handling the three kids so I wasn't really thinking of myself.

"We were about three miles away so we had a pretty good view. We just held each other tight and watched it. It was pretty emotional, but it was also very physical - all the rumbling vibrates through your body.

"The children were very impressed. It is Nicholas' dream come true."

Dr Patrick, a former pilot, has won several awards in his field and holds three patents in the areas of telerobotics, display design and integrated aircraft alerting systems.

He began training to become an astronaut at Nasa's Johnson Space Centre, in Texas, in 1998.

He is the fourth Briton to fly into space - following Helen Sharman, Piers Sellers and Michael Foale.

Before his mission, he explained how the flight was the realisation of a dream that was born as he watched television as a child in Saltburn.

He said: "When I was five, I saw the Apollo 11 moon landing, and that really, really caught my imagination.

"I remember exactly where I was - watching it with my parents. From that point on, I decided I wanted to be an astronaut."

Dr Palomino, a paediatrician, said: "I am very happy for him. I knew he had been in training for a long time for this.

"He emailed me and said, 'what a fantastic ride - well worth the wait'. It has been a long time coming for him."

The shuttle is due back on December 21 and Dr Palomino said the family would be having a quiet Christmas.

"It will be all of us together and him just going through the experience," she said.