Tim Peake is an astronaut and a former Space Station crew member.
His Principia mission was an eventful and busy six months in space. In the first month after his launch Peake conducted a spacewalk to repair the Station’s power supply. Other highlights of his mission saw him drive a rover across a simulated Mars terrain from space and he helped dock two spacecraft.
Peake was an officer in the Army Air Corps before becoming a helicopter flying instructor in 1998, graduating from the Empire Test Pilots School 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) completing trials on Apache helicopters.
In 2009, Peake beat over 9,000 other applicants for one of the six places on ESA’s new astronaut training programme. His long-duration flight to the International Space Station was launched on 15 December 2015, making him the first British ESA astronaut to visit the International Space Station.
