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December 16, 2015

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UK hits Peake space form with ISS trip

TIM Peake, the first Briton to travel to the International Space Station, blasted off yesterday from the Baikonur cosmodrome with two other astronauts, to cheers and excitement back home.

Peake, 43, joins Russian space veteran Yury Malenchenko and Tim Kopra of NASA for a six-month mission on the ISS.

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.

“It was great to watch Tim Peake blast off on his mission to join the International Space Station,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Twitter.

Russian space officials said the launch had gone according to plan and that the spacecraft was due to dock at the ISS at about 1724 GMT.

Former army major Peake — a European Space Agency flight engineer — begins a mission of more than 170 days at the orbiting research outpost along with Malenchenko, 53, and 52-year-old Kopra. His two fellow crew members have already spent 641 and 58 days in space respectively.

Peake’s mission has generated considerable excitement in Britain.

Crowds gathered in the Science Museum in London to witness the liftoff, with thousands of people breaking into screams and waving British flags as giant screens showed the rocket blasting off.

In Peake’s hometown of Chichester, the launch was shown at his old school.


 

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