Spanish astronaut and aerospace engineering professor Pedro Duque has been tapped to lead Spain's science ministry in the new Socialist cabinet shaping up after a no-confidence vote in parliament recently unseated the previous conservative Popular Party government.

A veteran of two space missions _ a mission on the Discovery space shuttle in 1998 and a 10-day visit to the International Space Station in 2003 _ Duque, 55, is an accomplished scientist who finished his aeronautical engineering degree at Madrid's Polytechnic University (UPM) with the highest-possible grade average.

He achieved domestic fame after becoming Spain's first astronaut.

The previous right-wing government of ousted prime minister Mariano Rajoy did not have a ministry exclusively dedicated to science, but rather included the field as a subdivision of the ministry of economy and competitiveness.

Duque is set to be one of the dozen or so ministers in the cabinet of new Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who ascended to the office on Friday after receiving the backing of an absolute majority of lawmakers in the vote of no confidence against Rajoy, whose PP has been engulfed in a flurry of corruption scandals.