MOSCOW: A Soyuz capsule brought back three astronauts from the International Space Station, including the first to represent Britian, in a safe parachute landing on Kazakh city, Zhezkazgan. The crew included Tim Kopra from NASA, Yuri Malenchenko from Russian agency Roscosmos, and European Space Agency's Tim Peake.
The three were extracted from the capsule and set for a quick examination by a recovery team. Smiling as he was examined by flight surgeons, Peake said he was enjoying "the smells of Earth" and fresh air, a stark contrast to the artificial atmosphere and high temperature inside the capsule. Former army major, he was on a mission for the ESA and is the first astronaut to wear a Union Jack flag on his arm. His mission called 'Principia', after Isaac Newton's seminal work, included a number of scientific experiments like testing the use of nitric oxide gas as a tool to monitor lung inflammation.
"This is about the UK becoming involved in human space flight hopefully for the foreseeable future. Not just for our community and our industry, but also for the kids and for outreach and to try and inspire people. Space is going to play an increasingly important part in our lives, and if the UK is not in the forefront of that we are missing out, quite simply," he said. The first Briton in space was Helen Sharman, who spent eight days on the Russian space station Mir on an expedition jointly funded by a private consortium and the Soviet government. Nasa astronauts with joint British citizenship have flown since, but Peake is the only Briton to have been sent into space by the British government via the European Space Agency.
During his long stint in space, Peake ran a marathon strapped to a treadmill and held a science lesson for 300,000 schoolchildren. Major Peake had also taken with him two tiny educational computers set up to measure the space station's environment, follow its journey through space, and pick up the Earth's magnetic field, as well as give schoolchildren the chance to have their computer code run in space. After flying by a Nasa gulfstream jet to Norway, Major Peake will go on to Cologne, Germany, where the European Astronaut Centre is based, for medical tests and a spell of recuperation.
