She’d like to have the first baby on Mars.

Nevertheless, with an aim of colonising another planet, the Mars mission can hardly be a complete haven from the sproglet-popping pressures. Indeed, another of the female British candidates on the shortlist, 24-year-old Maggie Lieu, made headlines earlier this week after announcing that she’d like to have the first baby on Mars.

_{Maggie Lieu}

But Earnshaw laughs off the suggestion that the crew is simply “going to Mars to have babies”, assuring me that “there’s definitely no pressure to populate the planet”.

She says: “We want to set up a place in which that will eventually be possible, but first of all a lot of research needs to be done into the effects of the lower gravity on Mars to see whether pregnancy is viable.”

'Mars will be my home'

Final assessments will take place later in the year to select the candidates who’ve got what it takes to survive in a harsh new habitat. There’s talk of the selection process of the final crew being broadcast as reality television, which will help fund the estimated £4 billion cost of the mission. The journey to Mars is likely to take seven months, and the colonists will have to live in an environment where temperatures plummet to -62°C and radiation levels are high.

Will Earnshaw fit the bill? A self-confessed introvert, she says she thinks she’ll be able to manage the isolation, citing times during university holidays when she’s been the only one living in her student house-share. “I’m quite happy pottering around by myself and leaving the house only for shopping,” she says.

And although she admits that leaving her family behind - who have been encouraging her all the way through the process - will be hard to come to terms with, she says her flexible attitude to the idea of “home” will help her to adjust.

“Home for me is where I’m living right now and where my friends are. I’m sure that if I get in to the final crew, the other three people – we’ll be doing all of our training together, we’ll be living together, I imagine – they will become my new home.”