New Crew Arrives at International Space Station

Image copyright PA Image caption Tim Peake’s wife Rebecca (centre) and their son Thomas were among those who watched the launch in Kazakhstan.

The trio will spend six months aboard the space outpost.

After six years of training and six hours of flying, the moment has come: Tim Peake has stepped into the International Space Station.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station are required to know Russian and English.

Four days ago, a Soyuz ferry craft ferried three space station residents to a frigid landing in Kazakhstan.

“The commander switched to manual control and everything went well”, the spokesman told AFP, adding they docked with the ISS about 3.30am AEST.

Rising slowly at first amid smoke and flames, the rocket quickly picked up speed until it became a bright star fading from sight.

Sharples High School live streamed the launch so pupils could witness Major Peake, aged 43, making history as the first fully British professional astronaut to be employed by a space agency.

Major Peake’s mission, called Prinicipia in homage to Sir Isaac Newton’s ground-breaking text on gravity and motion, will last nearly six months.

And ever since then, several Brits with dual citizenship have gone into space as part of other nations’ space programs, or as an element of privately-funded missions.

Earlier this afternoon, the European Space Agency confirmed that the “scheduled burns” (blasts from the rocket’s motor) had been made, allowing the spacecraft to manoeuvre towards the ISS.

Former pilot Tim Peake, of Chichester, blasted off into space from Kazakhstan yesterday morning and touched down at 5.33pm, according to the European Space Agency.

On Monday major Peake said he could not wait to see earth from space.

“It is all quite emotional for me”.

He lifted off from Pad 1 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome – the same launchpad used by Sputnik, the first satellite, and Russia’s Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space – on the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft.

The astronaut also received some warm words of support from the Queen, who published a letter to Peake penned by her and Prince Phillip saying she hoped the mission would “serve as an inspiration to a new generation of scientist and engineers”.