Serkan Golge was with his wife Kubra at his parent’s house when informed men arrived in the driveway. The policemen were in no mood to explain, summarily dragging Mr Golge away to a local station in the southern Turkish city of Antakya.

It was only eight days after last year’s failed coup attempt against Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but already the reprisals were in full swing.

The 37-year-old Nasa physicist, a Turkish-American citizen who was working on the manned mission to Mars programme, was one of tens of thousands of academics, police, military and journalists who were rounded up and detained as Mr Erdogan sought to re-establish his grip on power.