‘We love you’ – Tim Peake speaks to family from ISS

Peake’s mission to the International Space Station (ISS), for the European Space Agency, will last six months.

Ooooh, pretty! This is the Soyuz spacecraft shaking the bonds of gravity to carry astronauts to the International Space Station in the wee hours of this morning.

“I find all these things fascinating, and there are knock-on benefits for our ageing population”. Given that these flicks are disaster movies, they hopefully did not make the space engineers stationed at ISS too uneasy.

Major Peake launched from the same spot from which Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space in April 1961.

For 15 years, humans have been living continuously aboard the station to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies, making research breakthroughs not possible on the Earth that also will enable long-duration human and robotic exploration into deep space.

During their six-month mission aboard the station, the crew will conduct microgravity experiments, with lung health and inflammation of the astronauts to be charted.

Fire from the boosters of the Soyuz rocket cut a bright light through the overcast sky at the Moscow-operated cosmodrome in Kazakhstan as the spacecraft launched on schedule at 1103 GMT.

Today the International Space Station’s crew welcomed aboard its first “official” British astronaut, Tim Peake, just hours after he blasted off in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft alongside US and Russian spacefliers.

The Soyuz trio will join up with three astronauts already at the ISS – Scott Kelly of NASA and Russians Sergei Volkov and Mikhail Kornienko.

The three astronauts will return to Earth on June 5th.

Joining Peake are US astronaut Tim Kopra and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.

But he expected to speak to members of his family on Christmas Day, and was also looking forward to tucking into a Christmas Pudding sent to the space station in a supply delivery.

Her Majesty added that the “thoughts and prayers of the whole country are with him and the crew, especially at this time of year”.