HONG KONG: Britain’s first official astronaut Tim Peake is in Kazakhstan counting down the days before his historic journey to the International Space Station (ISS) on December 15.
The run-up to the launch is being spent setting up experiments, undergoing medical check-ups and physical training, and reviewing flight plans.
During this time Major Peake, 43, and his two crew companions will minimise contact with people to avoid falling ill and bringing unwanted bacteria or viruses onto the space station.
The former Army aviator and helicopter test pilot arrived at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on November 30 together with Russian crew commander Yuri Malenchenko and American Nasa astronaut Tim Kopra.
The trio will spend almost six months aboard the ISS which orbits the Earth at an average altitude of 220 miles.
“Major Tim” – whose name will strike a chord with David Bowie fans – is the first Briton to be employed as a professional astronaut by the European Space Agency (Esa).
Previous “British” astronauts have either had US citizenship and worked for Nasa, or been privately funded or sponsored.
The launch will take place at around 11.30am – noon UK time from Baikonur, the world’s oldest and largest space facility situated deep in the remote Kazakhstan desert steppe.
A Soyuz FG rocket – a Russian space mission workhorse with a 100% success record – will blast Major Peake and his fellow travellers into orbit in under 10 minutes.
But it will take six hours for them to catch up with the space station, hurtling through space at 17,500 mph.
During the launch the crew will be squeezed into the tiny seven-foot-long “descent module” of a Soyuz TMA spacecraft.
Once in space they will move to the spherical “orbital module” which is only slightly more spacious and attaches to the ISS.
