On Tuesday, December 15th 2015, at 11:03, the Brit Tim Peake left Earth. He became be the first English man in space – pretty cool! Imagine how excited Tim must have been.
It took him six hours of space travel to get to his destination, the International Space Station, 400 km above us. At the space station, Peake will be doing experiments together with two other crew members who fly with him there, and the astronauts that are already on ISS.
Peake has had to work hard to live his dream of going to space. Timothy Nigel Peake was born on the 7th of April 1972. He went to Chichester school for boys, then he continued on to the University of Portsmouth. He joined the army’s Cadet Force when he was just 13 years old. (He is now 43.) Peake had to beat over 8000 other contestants to become an astronaut and go into space – only six people were selected. Since he was accepted on the program he has trained intensely for six years in order to be able to do what he is doing today. Good luck to Tim Peake!
Also, let’s not forget about Helen Sharman, who was actually the very first Brit travelling into space. She is a chemist from Sheffield who was only 27 years old when she visited the Mir space station in 1991.