The spacecraft used by the British astronaut Tim Peake touched down in York yesterday, on the second leg of an earthly tour that has already taken in Bradford and Durham and will eventually burn out in Belfast.

Maj Peake’s Soyuz TMA-19M capsule has been mounted on the giant turntable in the Great Hall of the National Railway Museum, where it will remain on view until March 8. The space is usually reserved for great steam engines from generations past.

The Soyuz exhibition is being run in parallel with an education programme for children about the science behind space travel.

Maj Peake was the UK’s first European Space Agency astronaut to travel to the International Space Station. His capsule has been kitted out with virtual reality software by Samsung which simulates its descent on its way back to earth.

Gracie Houston, 14, from The Mount School in York tries out a spacesuit, part of an exhibition that runs alongside the exhibit of Tim Peake's space capsule which is now on display at the National Railway museum in York.

The astronaut had said when he accompanied it to Bradford’s National Science and Media Museum last September that it was an “engineering miracle” that had been his “lifeboat”during his 186-day expedition

“It kept me alive in space and through the punishing re-entry through the earth’s atmosphere,” he said.

Soyuz simulator gives young astronauts Peake practice