Soon, travelling in space will no longer be a thing of the future.
Major Timothy Nigel Peake will mark Britain joining in on the space travel endeavors as he and other Britons will have multiple space explorations for International Space Station on Moon and Mars.
'We have a serious project in the European Space Station to land on the moon, and that is part of an exploration of the solar system that will eventually take us to Mars.'
Major Peake spent 6 years of training to prepare for this 6 months mission. He was previously a helicopter test pilot and graduate from Sandhurst until he applied for an astronaut application online and was eventually selected out of the 8,000 applicants across Europe.
The mission will attempt to explore life outside Earth as well as observe how the human body can survive space travel. The mission is named Principia and is derived from Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathemetica, the work which opened the world to the laws of gravity. About 23 experiments are being conducted on Major Peake to prepare and assess how his body, and how human body in general, can survive this ambitious yet perilous space exploration.
With him in this astronaut exploration are mission commander Yuri Malencheko from Russia and Tim Kopra from NASA. Peake will act as the second engineer and he also happens to be the most junior among the 3-man spaceman team. Michael Fallon, Defence Secretary, added 'It's a big moment to see a British astronaut, a former serving officer, blasted off into space, I think the whole country will be getting behind him.' Dr Daniel Brown, space expert from Nottingham Trent University, also sees this mission as a milestone for UK space exploration.
Space flight is not without difficulties but Major Peake remains philosophical about it and is more concerned about delays that may arise due to various reasons including bad weather or technical failure.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
