Spacecraft Carrying Russian, American, Briton Docks With Space Station

British Prime Minister David Cameron wished Peake good luck in a video message in which he said that he would follow the space mission with “admiration and wonder”.

The otherwise smooth journey ended with a slightly delayed docking at 6.33 am, NZ time, as Russian commander Yuri Malenchenko aborted the automatic procedure and manually guided the spacecraft toward the station.

Major Peake, 43, is making history as the first fully British professional astronaut to be employed by a space agency.

After the switch to manual, Malenchenko backed further away from the station, tested the vehicle’s controls and deftly piloted the Soyuz to its docking port over the course of just 11 minutes with the help of the Russian Mission Control in Moscow.

It took a further six hours for the Soyuz spacecraft to catch up with its quarry, itself travelling at 17,500mph and orbiting the Earth at an average altitude of 220 miles.

The Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft blasted off from Kazakhstan early this morning, quickly reaching orbit without incident.

Asked what it felt like to watch the launch, she said: “It was fantastic, but quite emotional as you can imagine”.

In a tweet posted on Sunday, Peake disclosed that the International Space Station (ISS) will be treating the astronauts with a Star Wars screening to be projected onboard.

Peake will become the first Briton at the ISS.

Major Peake is the first government-funded British astronaut and the mission, named Principia after Isaac Newton’s great thesis on gravity, will involve scores of scientific experiments in space – including a study of headaches after take-off.

Kopra, the American, served at the space station as a flight engineer during Expedition 20.

The launch went off in spectacular fashion, assisted by Major Peake’s two boys Thomas, six, and Oliver, four, who counted down to the moment the rocket roared into the air.

“Of course, if the member states of Esa are supporting future human space flights, maybe even more, then we can look for new astronauts, maybe also female astronauts”.