Tim Peake, Britain’s first official astronaut, is on board the worldwide

A Soyuz space capsule carrying travelers from Russian Federation, the United States and United Kingdom arrived at the International Space Station today (Dec. 15), with its cosmonaut commander manually docking the spacecraft after its autopilot unexpectedly aborted an initial attempt.

The crew had to resort to manual docking after the automatic system didn’t work as planned.

It will be the first time on the space station for Peake, who is the first British astronaut to have a long-duration space station assignment. We also got the benefit of a moon rise which was lovely to see.

In a live link to family and friends viewing the drama on a cinema screen in a Baikonur theatre, he said of the journey: ” It was a handsome launch, that sunrise was absolutely spectacular.

The personal achievement of Major Tim Peake has been phenomenal: having applied for an ESA – European Space Agency – astronaut in 2008, his luck came in 2009.

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.

Malenchenko was particularly up to the task: He is a veteran of six space missions, both to the International Space Station and Russia’s Mir space station, and he has commanded the Soyuz during launch multiple times.

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They are scheduled to spend nearly six months aboard the space station, which orbits the Earth at an average altitude of 354 kilometres (220 miles).

It successfully reached its designated orbit about nine minutes later. Kopra is making his first trip on the Soyuz and second trip into space.

The British astronaut, 43 from Chichester, travelled for 6 hours in his historic flight on Tuesday marking the first official Briton to land on the ISS.

While on board the space station, Major Tim Peak tweeted about the lovely launch and the rise of the moon that he witnessed during his ascent.

During his time aboard the space station, he will take part in hundreds of experiments aimed at finding out the effects of microgravity on his own body.

Three other astronauts – NASA s Kjell Lindgren, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko – returned to Earth on Friday in a rare nighttime landing.