Astronaut Major Tim Peake walks up the stairs with Prime Minister David Cameron in 10 Downing Street in London yesterday.
Guardian News and Media/London
Britain’s first official astronaut has spoken of his delight at being selected for a lengthy mission aboard the International Space Station.
Major Tim Peake, a former army helicopter pilot, will blast off on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in November 2015. For the next two-and-a-half years, Peake, 41, will train as a flight engineer for the six-month mission during which he will carry out scientific experiments and be eligible for spacewalks.
“I’m absolutely delighted by the decision,” Peake told reporters at a press conference in London yesterday. “It really is a tremendous privilege to be assigned to a long duration mission to the ISS.”
Peake is the fourth of six astronauts who graduated from the European Astronaut Corps in 2009 to be assigned a mission to the International Space Station. He will fly to the station with two other crew, and join three who will already be aboard the ISS.
The last mission to the space station saw the rise to fame of Commander Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian to take charge of the ISS, and the first man in space to wholly embrace social media, photography, and guitar-playing.
His cover of Bowie’s Space Oddity, complete with microgravity guitar spins, went viral. Asked whether he intended to follow in Hadfield’s footsteps, Peake said he would tweet, but perhaps not repeat the Canadian’s virtuoso performances.
“I do play the guitar, but very badly, and I wouldn’t impose my singing on anybody,” he said. Hinting at what might be to come, Peake confessed that a friend had offered to teach him the didgeridoo, though any personal effects astronauts wish to take on a mission must fit into a container the size of a shoebox.
