A SCOTS accountant has been short listed for a spaceflight project which aims to establish a human settlement on Mars of just 20 people by 2025.

The Mars One mission attracted more than 200,000 applications from hopefuls willing to leave on a one-way ticket to the Red Planet, where the temperature is minus 60C and the atmosphere has so little oxygen it cannot be breathed.

The private spaceflight project is led by Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp.

In her video application, Sarah Johnson, 30, from Inverness, who is based in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, joked: "The reason I want to go on the mission to Mars is I find myself waking up every morning thinking there must be more to life and the reason for that is probably because I am an accountant.

"But I want to dispel the myth that accountants are dull and boring by becoming the world's first astronaut accountant."