Tim Peake

Major Timothy "Tim" Nigel Peake (born 7 April 1972) is a retired British European Space Agency astronaut, Army Air Corps officer and author.

He is the first British ESA astronaut, the second astronaut to bear a flag of the United Kingdom patch (following Helen Sharman), the sixth person born in the United Kingdom to go on board the International Space Station, and the seventh UK-born person in space. He began the ESA's intensive astronaut basic training course in September 2009 and graduated on 22 November 2010.

Early life
Peake was born in Chichester, Sussex, on April 7, 1972. He grew up in Westbourne, West Sussex. He studied at the Chichester High School for Boys, leaving in 1990 to attend the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

Military and aeronautical
Upon graduation from Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Peake received a short-service commission as a second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps on 8 August 1992. He served during rotary training holding as a platoon commander with the Royal Green Jackets, and was promoted to lieutenant on 8 August 1994. On 9 July 1997, he transferred to a regular commission, receiving a promotion to captain on 20 August.

Peake became a qualified helicopter pilot in 1994 and a qualified helicopter instructor in 1998, graduating from CFS(H) at the Defence Helicopter Flying School at RAF Shawbury in Shropshire. Promoted to major on 31 July 2004, he graduated from the Empire Test Pilots School in Wiltshire the following year, and was awarded the Westland's Trophy for best rotary wing student. He then served on Rotary Wing Test and Evaluation Squadron (RWTES) at MOD Boscombe Down completing trials on Apache helicopters.

Peake completed a BSc (Hons) in Flight Dynamics and Evaluation at the University of Portsmouth the following year. Peake left the army in 2009 after 17 years of service and over 3,000 flying hours to his credit, becoming a test pilot with AgustaWestland.

In ESA
Peake was selected to join the European Space Agency astronaut corps in 2009, flew to the ISS in 2015/16, and retired from active service in 2023.

Peake beat over 8,000 other applicants for one of the six places on the ESA's new astronaut training programme. The selection process included taking academic tests, fitness assessments and several interviews. Peake moved to Cologne with his family for the ESA training.

Peake was the first British or UK-born person to fly into space without a private contract (as did Helen Sharman, Mark Shuttleworth, and Richard Garriott) and/or foreign citizenship (held by astronauts Michael Foale, Gregory H. Johnson, Piers Sellers, Nicholas Patrick, Shuttleworth, and Garriott).

As part of his extensive astronaut training in 2011, Peake and five other astronauts joined an international mission, living in and exploring cave systems in Sardinia. This ESA CAVES mission enabled them to study how humans react to living in extreme conditions with complete isolation from the outside world. This expedition gave the team an idea of what they could expect and how they would cope in the confined space of the ISS.

On 16 April 2012, NASA announced that Peake would serve as an aquanaut aboard the Aquarius underwater laboratory during the NEEMO 16 undersea exploration mission, scheduled to begin on 11 June 2012 and last twelve days. The NEEMO 16 crew successfully "splashed down" at 11:05 am on 11 June. On the morning of 12 June, Peake and his crewmates officially became aquanauts, having spent over 24 hours underwater. The crew safely returned to the surface on 22 June.

During Expedition 44 Peake served as a backup astronaut for Soyuz TMA-17M spaceflight.

Expedition 46/47
Peake was launched to the space station (ISS), on 15 December 2015, for Expeditions 46 and 47. He launched successfully at 11:03 GMT from Baikonur Cosmodrome on board Soyuz TMA-19M. The official website dedicated to his mission is principia.org.uk.

During the launch, as per tradition, each cosmonaut was allowed three songs to be played to them. Peake chose Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now", U2's "Beautiful Day" and Coldplay's "A Sky Full of Stars".



During docking, the Kurs docking navigation system failed, and a manual docking was performed by Yuri Malenchenko who was alongside Peake and Tim Kopra. This delayed docking with the ISS by 10 minutes. The Soyuz finally docked with the ISS at 17:33 GMT. Peake received messages of support from the Queen and Elton John, after the successful docking. His first meal at the ISS was a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea.

A new year's message by Peake was broadcast by the BBC to celebrate 2016.

Peake supported a spacewalk by two American astronauts on 21 December 2015. He participated in the first spacewalk outside the ISS by a British astronaut on 15 January 2016. The purpose of the spacewalk was to replace a faulty sequential shunt unit on the station's solar arrays.



In February 2016, Peake presented Adele with a Global Success award at the Brit Awards in London.

On 24 April 2016, Peake ran the 2016 London Marathon from the ISS treadmill. Peake became the first man to run the marathon from space and the second person to run a marathon from space, after Sunita Williams, who ran the 2007 Boston Marathon from the ISS.

Peake was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to space research and scientific education.

At a special meeting of the Chichester City Council on 17 February 2016, it was agreed unanimously to confer the Freedom of the City upon Peake with the appropriate ceremony after his return later in 2016. On 18 June 2016, Peake returned to Earth from the ISS aboard the descent module of the Soyuz spacecraft that had taken him to the space station in December 2015. The spacecraft landed on the Kazakh steppe in Kazakhstan almost 300 mi southwest of the major city of Karaganda, landing at 09.15 UTC. Peake had completed approximately 3,000 orbits of the Earth and had covered a distance of 125 million kilometres (78 million miles).

International Space Station partnership and the Nobel Peace Prize
At the UK National Student Space Conference in early 2014, Peake expressed his support for the initiative to award the International Space Station partnership the Nobel Peace Prize.

"I was delighted to read about the International Space Station and the discussions about it being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize because … it has been one of the most incredible international partnerships...[The ISS] really has brought many nations together through difficult times, and continues to do so."

Peake noted that with increasing constraints on space programs around the world, collaborative initiatives such as ISS will be necessary for future endeavours. "I think [the ISS] really has to be the model for future space exploration because with budgets becoming more and more constrained, then, really one nation is not going to have the capability to expand exploration out into the solar system, to Mars and beyond. We are going to have to work together on projects."

Personal life
Peake is married to Rebecca, with whom he has two sons, and enjoys climbing, caving, cross-country running and triathlon.

When he was younger Peake was a Cub Scout and is now an ambassador for the Prince's Trust and the Scout Association in the UK, and for STEM Learning.

Awards
In October 2016, at the National Space Centre, Tim Peake received an honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Leicester. In May 2021, as part of its 150th-anniversary celebrations, the Institution of Engineering and Technology awarded Peake an Honorary Fellowship for his outstanding contribution to space exploration, engineering and the technology industry.