Who is going into space?
Major Tim Peake is a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut who is part of a three person crew blasting off for the International Space Station (ISS) at 11.03 GMT on Tuesday 15 December. Peake was born in Chichester in 1972. He was a pilot in the Army Air Corp, and then an instructor flying Apache helicopters. After leaving the Army, he became a test pilot and then in 2009, he beat 8000 other applicants to be selected as an astronaut with ESA.
This was a significant moment because until now Britain has refused to support the ESA human spaceflight programme. Peake’s commander on the flight is Russia’s Yuri Malenchenko. A veteran of 641 days in space, Malenchenko became the first person to marry in space, weding his fiancee via radio link while serving aboard the ISS in 2011. The third astronaut is Nasa’s Timothy Kopra. This will be his second visit to the ISS, having been there in 2009.
What is the purpose of his mission?
The mission is called Principia, after Isaac Newton’s great work, the Principia Mathematica. Published in 1687, it spelled out Newton’s law of gravity and his three laws of motion. It is widely held to be the greatest work of science ever published.
The mission badge, featuring Newton’s apple and the Soyuz rocket, has been designed by Troy Wood, a 13-year-old who won the BBC’s Blue Peter competition to design the patch. He beat 3000 other entries.
Once at the station, Peake will work on science experiments and “housekeeping”. A large part of the astronauts’ work is to keep everything working on the ISS. He will also run the London marathon on a treadmill on the station during the event on 24 April 2016.
How will he get there and how long will it take?
Peake will be launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. It will lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This is the same place that launched the world’s first astronaut, Yuri Gagarin, on 12 April 1961.
Eight minutes, 45 seconds after launch, Soyuz will be in orbit. Peake and his fellow astronauts will then attempt to fly the “short docking” route to the ISS. To do this, they must have launched within minutes of the space station flying overhead at Baikonur. If successful, it will allow them to dock at around 17:24 GMT. More safety checks will take place, meaning that they do not enter the space station until 19:25 GMT.
If the launch is delayed for any reason, they will have to follow the “long docking” route. This will mean they spend two days in the Soyuz catching up with the space station. Until 2014, this was the standard way for a crew to reach the ISS.
Is a launch today guaranteed?
There is no guarantee of a launch. Space flights remain a high-risk activity. Any sign that there is a problem with the rocket and controllers will either delay or even postpone the launch.
What are the key points in the countdown?
- Three hours and 30 minutes before launch, the crew say goodbye to family, separated by a window to prevent any possible infection being transmitted and carried into space.
- One hour and 20 minutes before launch the hatch is closed, sealing the astronauts inside. The final checks begin.
- 44 minutes before launch the support towers move away from the rocket, opening like a clam shell.
- Six minutes before launch the checks will be complete and the launch vehicle should be declared ready to go.
- Two minutes and 56 seconds before launch, the ISS flies over head at Baikonur.
- One minute before launch the spacecraft moves into internal battery power.
- At 11:03 GMT, blast-off is scheduled to occur.
Have there been British astronauts before?
Yes, but not many.
The first British astronaut was chemist Helen Sharman. Born in Sheffield, she spent a week on the Russian Mir Space Station in 1991. The mission was financed by a private consortium led by British Aerospace. When this failed to raise the full sum needed, Mikhail Gorbachev is said to have intervened personally to approve Russia footing the rest of the bill. She performed science experiments designed by school children.
Michael Foale has dual British-American nationality and as a Nasa astronaut clocked up more than 370 days in space, over six space shuttle missions. He was born in Louth and studied at Queen’s college, Cambridge. During a visit to the Mir Space Station in 1995, he became the first Briton to perform a spacewalk. In 2003, he commanded the ISS for six months.
Piers Sellers was born in Crowborough. Trained as a Royal Air Force cadet to pilot aircraft, he moved to America in 1982 and become a research meteorologist for Nasa. There, he began the process of becoming a naturalised American citizen, so that he could join the astronaut corp. He succeeded in 1996 and flew on three space shuttle missions, logging 35 days in space.
When will Tim Peake come back?
Peake is scheduled to return on 5 June 2016 but he’s already planning his next trip. Answering a student’s question about where he would like to go next, he said, “I would like to go to Mars. I think it’s fascinating; it’s quite closely related to Earth in being one of the small, rocky planets that probably once had an atmosphere and once had oceans on it.” Unfortunately, there are no plans to send ESA astronauts to Mars. But Peake may get a shot at the Moon, where landings could happen in the late 2020s.
