Lift off as Tim Peake follows Yorkshire pioneer into space

As he climbed aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket in Kazakhstan to make the historic flight to the International Space Station, Major Peake followed in the celebrated footsteps of Sheffield-born astronaut Helen Sharman.

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Major Peake will spend six months on the International Space Station and spend Christmas orbiting the planet 240 miles above its surface, which is coincidentally the distance between his home in Chichester and Dr Sharman’s home city.

Twenty four years have elapsed since Dr Sharman, who graduated from Sheffield University with a degree in chemistry, stepped foot on the space station Mir as part of a joint project between British business and the Russian space agency.

Like Dr Sharman, Major Peake will conduct a series of experiments while orbiting the earth and engage in a series of activities designed to engage British schoolchildren with space exploration and science.

But unlike Project Juno in 1991, Major Peake’s plans have not been beset by the funding issues that at one time threatened Dr Sharman’s mission, which only went ahead when Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev intervened to plug the gap created by a shortage of western investment.

Dr Sharman, who had previously worked as chemist with confectioners Mars on chocolate flavours before being selected ahead of 13,000 other candidates for her space role, spent 18 rigorous months in training to prepare for her trip.

Major Peake, by contrast, has spent the last six years getting ready for take-off and has undergone 6,000 hours of training, including shadowing the crew of another mission.

Among the possessions he takes into space with him today will be a copy of Road To The Stars by Yuri Gagarin, a gift from Dr Sharman who received the book from Russian cosmonauts in 1991. Major Peake will bring the book back to Earth with him so that he and Dr Sharman can gift it to the next British space traveller.

The autobiography of the first man in space is not the only link between Britain’s two space pioneers: Major Peake will be thrust into orbit in a near-identical Soyuz capsule to the one that launched the career of Dr Sharman.

The design of Russian spaceships has changed little in half a century and for all the advancements of the last 50 years the Soyuz capsule remains the most reliable technology in space history.

Once he returns to Earth, Major Peake’s life will never be the same again, as Dr Sharman will testify. She was awarded the OBE in 1993 and famously dropped the flame from her torch at the opening ceremony of the World Student Games in Sheffield two years earlier.

The 52-year-old still gets standing ovations at many of her public speaking engagements and is currently operations manager at the chemistry department of Imperial College London.

Read more:

Tim Peake sets off on historic journey to International Space Station

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