Astronaut Tim Peake becomes first to spacewalk under British flag

After than Tim Kopra is off to change some lightbulbs while our man in space will be laying some cabling between the Unity and Harmony modules.

Major Peake will start breathing pure oxygen two hours prior to the mission, because the pressure inside their suits is lower than that of the ISS.

As Peake left the space station, station commander Scott Kelly said, “Hey Tim, it’s really cool seeing that Union Jack go outside.

I will have a few moments where I’ll just be hanging beneath the airlock and I can have a look around, look down on planet Earth and see what that feels like”, said Major Peake. While it can function with only seven, any additional failure would be a problem – so station officials scheduled a spacewalk to replace the shorted-out voltage regulator responsible for the failure.

The pair will work in 45-minute blocks of daylight, then complete darkness, as the station orbits Earth every one-and-a-half hours. “Wishing you a happy stroll outdoors in the universe”, McCartney wrote.

Earlier, Prime Minister David Cameron posted: “Good luck to @astro-timpeake on today’s #spacewalk”.

Famous faces have already sent messages of support for the astronaut.

“A spacewalk is absolutely the pinnacle of an astronaut’s career”.

More recently, the two read and reviewed their almost forty page long mission timeline.

There was a minor hiccup when part of Major Peake’s safety tether appeared to be snagged, but it was quickly corrected.

After the operation was terminated by the lead Flight Director, Major Peake and Colonel Kopra were told to spend some time cleaning up their tools before heading to safety.

It’s reported that the repairs will take under three hours.

NASA astronaut Tim Kopra and European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake will work outside the International Space Station today (Jan. 14). They inspected the broken equipment and found no damage, meaning the fault was likely internal.

Mr Peake said the spacewalk was the “icing on the cake” for his son.

Tim Peake and Tim Kopra are performing the task.

Other astronauts from the United Kingdom have performed EVAs – but only after taking USA citizenship and being selected by Nasa.

It’s something they’ve practised for weeks, having also ran through it for months on Earth.