An astronomical challenge: Tim Peake on taking a trip to infinity and beyond

Having been the first UK astronaut to visit the International Space Station after years of training, Tim Peake has taken on his next challenge — trying to take on the enormity of the Universe’s really big questions for younger readers. Mike McGrath-Bryan takes a giant leap to find out more

Sat, 22 Oct, 2022 - 02:00

Mike McGrath Bryan

It’s one thing to take years of your life learning to be an astronaut, learning to fly spacecraft, undertaking gruelling endurance training, and preparing to live aboard a space station, but, in its own way, trying to break down for inquiring younger minds the big questions that have led humanity to the age of space and technology is also a challenging task.

Former European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake is in chipper form on the other end of a Zoom connection on a busy press day, chatting about his latest kids’ non-fiction book, The Cosmic Diary of Our Incredible Universe, a tome that seeks to explain the big jumps in humanity’s progress, from the Big Bang to the current day.

“One of the things I love doing is trying to explain things in the most simple terms, and I think I’ve always tried to do that for myself, whether I was a test pilot, and I was trying to break down some really difficult concepts, or as an astronaut, so I figure if I can kind of break it down into ways that I can easily understand things, then that helps me.

“I wanted to do that, with the biggest stuff out there, from the Big Bang, breaking it down into a chronological order, having a bit of fun with it, plenty of facts and information, but also trying to make it easy to understand.

“It all really stemmed from out on my spacewalk, when I had these moments to reflect on who we are, where we’ve come from as a human species, looking down on our planet, and asking, ‘how did we even get here in the first place?’”

Peake is more than qualified for the job, in any case, being selected by the European Space Agency in 2009, as the first UK astronaut assigned to visit the International Space Station in May 2013, launched into space on December 15, 2015, and conducting over 250 scientific experiments aboard the spacecraft in his time there.

“I was very fortunate to get selected out of over 8500 candidates, and then embark on this training process. It takes about four years to train for your first mission to space. There’s an awful lot of things to cover, from flying a spacecraft, to spacewalking, to docking cargo vehicles, all the medical training... The list is endless, but it’s a huge amount of fun, and the training in itself is an incredible experience.

“I spent seven days living in a cave with some of my fellow astronauts, that was quite demanding. The idea of that was to make us uncomfortable, to put us in a stressful situation, and make us hungry and cold and wet, so that we can explore how to do conflict resolution, what you feel like when you’re under stress and pressure, how do you work well with other people under those circumstances. Then we spent 12 days living underwater off the coast of Florida in an underwater habitat, as a simulated mission to an asteroid. Brilliant fun.”

‘The Cosmic Diary of Our Incredible Universe’ by Tim Peake is available now

That must all pale in comparison to the feeling of blasting off into the atmosphere, docking at the International Space Station and disembarking into a huge international point of collaboration; to say nothing of the sight of the Earth from afar. On a human level, it’s a privilege Peake has cherished.

“Launch day is just full of so many firsts, and so many emotions, from saying goodbye to your friends and family, to all of the fanfare and the attention as you’re taken to the rocket, hundreds of people there to wave you off, and then you take this elevator ride up.

“But there’s that moment where three crew members go into the rocket, we strap ourselves in, and we say goodbye to the last engineer who closes the hatch on top of us. That’s the moment where you can only think, ‘right, this is it now, where it’s just us three, after all this training, preparation, this enormous team. It’s now down to us three to get this rocket into space’.

“That’s where your mindset really changes, your mindset becomes focused on what’s immediately ahead of you. But it’s an incredible journey, I mean, the vibration, the noise, the power of a rocket launch, a very violent experience, really, very dynamic, aggressive, and then that gets mixed with the absolute peace, tranquillity and silence, when you finally make it into space.”

Since returning to Earth, Peake has been working on fiction and non-fiction books on the themes of space and his experiences, as well as fronting a space education programme for young people, Principia. Of course, before he was able to take on any glamourous post-space occupations, he had to readjust to gravity.

“It probably takes about six months to physically adjust fully, or for your muscle strength and bone density to recover. That whole process is just a physical process. I think what’s more important is that period of reflecting on what you’ve done, and being able to mentally process what that experience is like, and that takes a while as well, because you’re so busy, when you get back from a mission.

“It’s not until you get some peace and quiet that you can actually really reflect on what you’ve done. I remember talking to several Apollo astronauts, and they’ve said, well, they don’t think they’ll ever process quite fully what that experience has done to them, and how it’s changed them.

“But one of the things that we have to do as astronauts is to be ambassadors for space. It’s a hugely privileged position to be in, to go and have a space mission. So I think you’ve got to connect, you’ve got to educate people when you get back, and it’s really important that we do that. We’re doing some incredible things in space, we’ve got a really new exciting programme, going back to the moon, and onto Mars. It’s important to reach out and tell people what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”