State Papers: Nasa wanted to use Shannon Airport as a landing site for the space shuttle

At the time, NASA was preparing to launch the space shuttle, Atlantis, in June 1995 on a mission to dock with the Russian Mir space station

The US embassy in Dublin had asked for Shannon Airport – which was a key transatlantic stopover base as Europe’s westernmost airport with a 3,199-metre runway – to be included on a worldwide list of potential landing sites.

“Shannon, we’ve got a problem” could have become a famous saying if one of the more unusual emergency plans in the rich aviation history of the airport with the longest runway in Ireland had come to pass.

Newly released files from the National Archives show US officials contacted the Irish government in March 1995 to seek permission to use Shannon Airport in the event of some malfunction with a space shuttle mission.