Brit in Space Stargazing Live

A British astronaut and a successful launch. At 11 o'clock this morning,

Tim Peake began his journey to become the first British astronaut

on the International Space Station. It was an extraordinary morning but

it has been an even more exciting afternoon. Not everything has gone

to plan. What was meant to be a routine moment with the Soyuz

spacecraft docking with the International Space Station, turned

out to be anything but. This is what happened to hours ago. He seems to

be backing away. There has been an abort. He is off axis. They had to

resort to docking manually. We will bring you the moment when Tim boards

the space station. I am Brian Cox and this is Dara O'Briain and this

is Stargazing Live: Brit in Space! Hello and welcome to the Science

Museum in London where thousands of people have come to enjoy Tim peat's

arrival at the International Space Station, and what an arrival.

Joining us now is someone who knows all about the perils of space

travel, a man who spent 166 days in space, has flown a Soyuz spacecraft

and a space shuttle, and has commanded the space station, please

welcome Chris Hadfield! CHEERING

Chris, welcome back. We saw there that Tim has just about docked with

the International Space Station. You have been there before. What is it

like in the Soyuz now, waiting to open that hatch? It is every

Christmas eve you have ever had in your life. You know what is about to

happen. You understand the process but at the same time you haven't

quite got there yet. They have changed out of their pressure suits

into probably matching blue flight suits. They are waiting to when the

final pressure check is done, so they can open the hatch and float

into their ultimate destination, the space station. We will see great

happiness, I suppose. They all know each other? They have all trained

together and spent years together at Star City. It is not just a visible

moment, and a significant professional moment, but it is a

personal moment for each member of the crew. Is it a nervous wait or is

it satisfying now that the docking is safely done? The launch was the

most dangerous. The docking was the most complex for the crew but both

of those are behind them now. Now it is a matter of the horse is in the

gate and we're just waiting until they can get away with the next six

months of work. While we wait for that moment when Tim came through

the hatch, let's relive the moment of how he got there with the crowds

at the scene and on the ground at Baikonur.

It is fair to say leaving the surface of a planet is not something

you do in a rush. Good luck, Tim! Tim's morning was one of checks and

double checks. There was still time for a farewell to his family. An

emotional time for all of them. In Chichester, Tim's home town, the

crowds gathered. And we were joined at the Science Museum by thousands

of schoolchildren. Good luck, Tim! The tension was building. Ten, nine,

eight... And then at 11:03am and ten seconds... Three, two, one! And Tim

is a way! Go, Tim! The sound of it, the sight of it, it

is brilliant, it is like it is alive! There was time to celebrate

here at the Science Museum. And around the country. Nine minutes

after liftoff the engine was cut and the astronauts were suddenly

weightless. Tim had made it into orbit. We had a Brit on his way to

the International Space Station. It was so exciting and I wish I was

there with Tim Peake. So happy that it went safely and I hope he has a

good Christmas there. The question is, what is happening

now on the ISS? They docked around 5:30pm. How long does it take for

all the checks to take place? About 90 minutes. Also, Jiri will put the

Soyuz to sleep. Part of the things he will be doing is shutting down

the systems to a long-term storage moment, so that at any minute, if

there was a problem, they could race into the Soyuz, close the hatch and

they would be ready to go. We saw a couple of problems on the way to the

docking. Will that affect anything in terms of opening the hatch? What

we think we know if they had some sort of thrust a problem. We will

wait until the technicians in Moscow have had a look to see what went

wrong with the Soyuz. They may have to fly home integrated mode, change

the software, we will have to wait and see. Fly home in a degraded

mode. Very relaxed! Tim Peake will be answering some of the questions

you put to him before he blasted off later, but first, here is a quick

look at more about him. It is not often you find someone

like Tim Peake. Husband, father, military test pilot. I guess I am an

ordinary person who is fortunate enough to do an extraordinary job.

Being an astronaut sounds cool but living and working in a handful of

sealed boxes for six takes a unique mindset. To be an astronaut, firstly

you have to be passionate about what you are doing. You have to be able

to get on with people in a multicultural environment and

working in confined spaces. Tim was one of only six European hopefuls

chosen from a field of 10,000 applicants. Sometimes you have to

pinch or self. I am going to try and enjoy every moment of it. Just to

experience the launch, the re-entry and living and working in space will

be a wonderful feeling. As is or earlier, it takes nine

minutes to get into orbit. We have lost a little bit of sound there. I

was going to say then the tricky part begins. Essentially, the

docking has to happen. We have a graphic here. Easy in principle. If

you want to catch something on the ground, you press the accelerator

and speed up. In space, that is difficult because your altitude is

linked to your orbital speed. If you want to catch and other spacecraft

up, what you have to do is you also increase your altitude. If you're

not careful, you will miss. Chris, you have done this, actually. Can

you run through how that docking happens? They are firing the engines

on the Soyuz and they started out well below the station as they

slowly caught up to it and the closer they got, the higher they

made their orbit, until they were in the vicinity of the station and then

it is a matter of manoeuvring around to line up perfectly with the

docking port that they went to. But as they closed in and got closer and

closer with the automatic system, something went wrong. As we will

see. Eventually, they got the problem sorted, but it perfectly

lined up and came in and docked. This is to scale, this little tiny

Soyuz, into dock with the space station. It is a counter intuitive

type of motion. If you put your foot on the gas, you will go up high. If

you were just to fire these thrusters on the back, to push

straight at the station, it moves you closer but it changes the circle

of your orbit, so what it looks like to you is you are rising up and then

suddenly, your orbit is bigger so you fall back. It is a really

counterintuitive thing and you have to anticipate the problems and it

requires a bunch of practice. It makes it all the more remarkable to

see what we will see in a moment, which is Yuri taking the controls.

That is not what we got today. At five o'clock this afternoon we

started seeing these stunning images from the International Space

Station, looking down as Tim's spacecraft was approaching. At

first, this all seemed to be going to plan, but then slowly, everything

changed. It is now 16 minutes past five and

the ISS is directly over London. You can see the thrusters firing as the

vehicle is making the final corrections. It seems to be backing

away. It is backing away. There has been an abort. This here means

emergency. The large engines are firing. The vehicle, for whatever

reason, has decided there is a problem so it is backing away so now

they will have to solve the problem, to figure out what caused it so they

will give it to Yuri. Is that relatively routine? It may be

happens ten or 20% of the time that we have to do a manual docking. It

could have been a thruster fail. It could have been one of the antenna

giving spurious information. They may let the computer try it again or

they may say Yuri, let's bring it in manually and docket. This here means

Yuri has activated his manual controls. He has punched it up to

half a metre a second closure. He has backed away again. Right now he

is off axis so he is probably backing away again. He may be at the

point where he has to do the whole thing manually, so Tim Kopra and Tim

Peake, Tim will be holding the book open, it will be completely manual

activities. This is why you need pilots! This is why you need great

test pilots. Yes, we are very careful who we choose? Could they

are bought and returned to Earth? At any point they could return to

Earth. All of our feeds have gone now. They will be crossing over mum

by. They are closing in the dock. -- Mumbai. Only 15 minutes ago they

were over London. In another ten minutes we will be over Perth.

They have got to go for docking. Stand-by for contact. Contact has

been confirmed. Contact. Confirm contact. Congratulations. Waiting

for capture. And capture. We have capture! We have docked with the

space station! All right! APPLAUSE

We were a lot more nervous than you were. You have been through that

before, docking with the Soviet space station Mir 20 years ago. It

was 20 years and a month ago that we docked with the Russian space

station Mir. We got to similar circumstances where the automated

system started giving us bad information so we actually had to

take over and just use a wristwatch and a handwritten piece of paper and

just my thumb to look at what part of the space station was a certain

length and just eyeball it all the way in to bring it in and dock the

space shuttle Atlantis to Mir. I think we have the video of you doing

that. There is Mir on the left and the docking system on the right. You

did that with your thumbs so you know how big your thumb is? I know

that is one metre, five metres, so I just estimated it. It was a very

focused moment on board the space shuttle. That was my first flight. I

was the only rookie on that crew but I was the guy in charge of ranging.

It was not something we were unprepared for. It was not something

we expected but we trained and prepared and spent a lot of our

lives getting ready. It is worth saying that you said it looks

dramatic to the outside bet you were saying Yuri did that yesterday and

the day before, he is used to it. They have been in quarantine for two

weeks. They have assimilated and quarantine, simple but enough so

that the instructors can give their malfunction is and they can make

sure their skills are as fresh as they can be. We can only imagine how

dramatic it was for the friends and family. Dallas Campbell is in

Baikonur. It has been fantastic. We had a few

moments of tension. The Ford Ka has been flowing freely. -- vodka. I

would point out we are no longer in the cosmodrome, in Baikonur town.

We're in the municipal hall where everyone has done, the friends,

family of the astronauts. If you swing the camera around, you might

get the look of everyone up there. I am going to be interviewing and

talking to some of those people a little later on. Nervous times for

them. We are still waiting for the big moment when the hatch will open.

We will hopefully have it for you before the end of the programme.

Right now he will be in the Soyuz trying to get used to be sensation.

How many people envy him and would like to go into space at some stage?

Most of us have. You still want to go back up and do more. How many of

you with raise your hands after you have seen this? So far the launch

has been the most erratic part of Tim's and a. For his body, the drama

is just beginning. Now he is in orbit, it is under attack from

space. And attacked him has been training hard to resist. -- an

attack Tim. I am doing an exercise protocol on a bike machine. On board

we have a cycle machine, a treadmill and a multi gym which uses vacuum

cylinders to give us weight training. On earth, going to the gym

is not a matter of life and death. In space it is an essential activity

which stops to withering away and could even save your life.

Everything you see about the human body is designed to work optimally

in one gene. Our bones and muscles operate the way they do. Living

bones are constantly being broken down and rebuilt, according to where

the body feels forced being exerted. Less force means less Kneebone. In

space flight we have a situation where don't is removed and new bone

is not performed in its place. It is not just bones. Muscles will lose

size and strength as well. Nasa have recorded muscle mass reduction of

about 15% and power muscle 30% during stints in space. Without

exercise that this could be as much as 20% of mass in just a week. That

is bad news for the most important muscle of them all, the heart. Your

heart has an easy time pumping blood around your body. The muscle itself

shrinks. If you did nothing to stop that, you would be in very bad shape

when you return to Earth. Body fluid freed from the rigour of gravity

will also misbehave. Around two litres of it moves from the legs to

the chest and head. Because of this, Tim Mace suffered the twin

indignities of acquiring a puffy face and skinny legs. -- may suffer.

The increase of pressure inside his skull may result in space headaches

and could crush his optic nerve resulting in blurred vision. Neither

of these phenomena are fully understood, they occur in some

astronauts and not others. Understanding all the aspects of

living in microgravity is important when it comes to longer range space

travel. The question is, what dated we need to fill in the gaps to allow

us to say we are confident we will know what happens to astronauts

during a 3-5-year mission to Mars. Another reason why Tim needed to be

fit before he went and needs to stay fit while he is there. The most

important experiment on the ISS are the astronauts themselves.

I should just say we are hoping the hatch will be open in 5-10 minutes'

time. No one could not even Baikonur, has pictures from the ISS

at the moment. We saw how difficult it is physically to go into space

and then come back again. First of all, into space. Tim has been out

there for 6-7 hours. What will he be feeling? Imagine if they shut

gravity off right now for you, you would come floating off the floor.

It would be hilarious and fun and liberating and tumbling. Pretty soon

you would start to feel nor shirts and your body would stop filling

your skeleton. -- nauseous. Tim is probably feeling disoriented and

clumsy. Fluid is starting to shift to his head so he is probably

developing a sinus headache. He is also exhilarated with the

experience. It is all of those things happening at once and it will

take a day to start to settle down and probably a week to get good at

flying around the spaceship. Yuri is on his sixth flight now. His body,

this is something his body knows from history. His adaptation, if

other people are an indication, will be pretty quick. For Tim, it is a

different story. It is suddenly a very new environment. It will take a

little while before he will adapt. Will he expect to be a bit clumsy?

When we see Tim come through the hatch and we watch him on video,

watch how he moves compared with how you remove all the guys that have

been up there a few months move. -- Yuri. Some will be more clumsy than

others. Like someone on the eyes for the first time. You have to cling to

someone else until you get your feet. It takes some getting used to.

On the ground, how long does it take to get used to gravity again? Your

body forgets what to do with the weight of gravity. Your balance

system is shot. If you stand up, you kind of tumble over. Your heart has

forgotten how to lift the blood to your head. You faint if you stand

up. We have footage of you in 2013 after your five month trip. It is a

fairly hefty landing, isn't it? It is. The rescue queues are there. --

the rescue crews. You are delighted to be home. You do not want to use

emulator self to be to nor shirts. -- stimulate yourself. You need a

couple of good sleep. We landed in Scotland for gas. I felt quite a bit

better by the time we landed there. I landed once in the United States

and then to Houston. By the time I got to Houston, I was walking and

talking a cave. Within a couple of days I felt reasonable. It took

months to truly get my body back. -- walking and talking OK. Running took

four months before that felt completely normal. My skeleton was

the slowest thing. I had lost about 8% of the bone across my hip. It

took about 18 months for that bone to get hard again. It was a lot of

interest to the medical community. This is the International Space

Station. Where would he have docked? One place for the space shuttle to

dock and a lot of the resupply ship. Soyuz can dock here on top or can

come around and Doctor one of the two ports underneath or they can

dock at the back. -- dock at one. Here is where they are docked right

now. When they have all the checks done, they will open the hatch and

enter the station. The earth is down here... The Earth is below us and

the sky above. This segment is usually forward. This is kind of the

way it looks. If you were a battleship or starship, this is how

the station looks. If you want to do some astronomy, you have to get

positioned onto Windows looking this way to see the universe. If you want

to do astronomy with your eyes can you need to look at the hatch is

through the top. On this platform out here, there is a payload that

looks at x-rays, to look at x-ray transmitting stars. Over here is the

Arther magnetic spectrometer which is collecting subatomic particles.

These are the first pictures live from inside the space station. We

are looking down the tunnel at the hatch that leads to the Soyuz,

straight down at the Earth along the tunnel. Inside that module, at the

hatch underneath. OK. Ironically this is not a great place to look at

the stars. It is almost like looking at the stars from inside your home.

You hardly ever get the lights of long enough in order to really get a

good look at the sky. We do not make the whole space station dark. We go

around the world so quickly that you do not have very long in the dark to

look at it. I think we will go over to Dallas in Baikonur now. How are

things there? It is terrific here. We are waiting for the hatch to

open. Can you hear me now? OK. Perfect sorry, we had a bit of a

sound problem. I am joined by two people who know Tim very well. This

is Tim's sister and Tim's best man. I will post because I think the

hatch is going to open in a minute. We will just chat for a minute. The

owner, how was your day-to-day question what it must have been

incredibly emotional. -- Fiona. question what it must have been

has been everything he has worked for. He has trained really hard for

this. It could not have gone better. The weather was beautiful and there

was no wind, far better than I thought it would be. Were you

nervous at all? Once you get here, it seems to be a day-to-day routine

job. Everyone seems to know what they are doing and everything

slotted into place when we got here, I think. Tell me a bit about him as

a person. You are his best man. He is a fabulous guy. The guys in the

studio have met him. He is cool, calm, collected, extremely good fun,

the most relaxed guy you could ever meet. He is the most brilliant

ambassador for science and education. His commitment to that is

unparalleled, isn't it? He is passionate about it. A manned space

flight, this is key to him. I will pause now. I think it is time for

the hatch. We think it is about to happen because he has a tool in his

hand. In his left hand is the mechanism, the wrench he will plug

in to the driving mechanism and open the hatch. This is Scott Kelly in

the front. He is up there for a year. You can see the hatch being

opened. Scott noticed where he was flowing. You can see cameras at the

ready. Do we know what order they will appear in? It is really up to

Yuri Malenchenko. You guess that they might send Tim through first?

Because he is the rookie, they may. It depends how he is feeling. We are

about to watch a man doing a selfie on the International Space Station.

So, Yuri Malenchenko will be on, also Tim Kopra as well. This means

that we know everything is fine for that they have gone ahead. All the

seals are correct. They have completed all the pressure checks.

When the space patient and the Soyuz came together, they trapped a bit of

space in between the two of them. They had to make sure all the seals

were working. It is a liberal warrior is processed. That averages

had to equalise. All of that has gone well. There is one that your

ree has probably be cranking on the inside. -- Yuri has probably been

cranking. They are about to pull the hatch all the weight open. It is

almost time for Tim to enter the International Space Station.

Who is it going to be? They have the same question, who is it going to

be? They will be ready to stretch. They are also smelling the Soyuz!

The smell has just floated in. It is interesting that there is more stale

air in the Soyuz down in the ISS. The space station has a terrific

aero freshening system but the Soyuz, not so much. Seems like they

want to get all the photographs. I bet Yuri is saying, had you got the

camera ready? It all seems very mundane now! You said the astronauts

would have been going about their business. The command of the space

station would have been very closely following what is going on but for

the other guys, they can't help it, they are just going about their

business so they would not be wasting their time. They would be

doing experiments waiting until this point. They would have been busy

until five minutes ago. What is the first conversation after they have

greeted each other and said hello. They will have a quick discussion

about what to do in case of an emergency. If there was a

depressurisation or a fire or anything else, who would go to which

Soyuz, who is in command, who will make the decisions, which page on

the check list will be go for this consideration. It seems subtle. We

may lose those pictures as they essentially do a safety briefing? We

know in Baikonur there is Tim's wife and mother. They seem very relaxed.

I suppose they are feeding off the fact that the astronauts are very

relaxed. I bet they are very tired. It has been a long day for the

family. It is nearly midnight in Kazakhstan. They will know when they

are finally in. Wants the hatches open, a journey which began decades

ago when Tim started dreaming about this, will arrive at its destination

so his mother will breathe a sigh of relief at multiple levels. Tim has

been training since 2009. That he did not just start thinking about

this six years ago, it has been in his mind for a long time so it has

been a long road for this destination. You mentioned the

safety briefing, a meteorite impact is likely to happen -- is as likely

to happen now... He had better turnout again. That is interesting

just as I said that. May be an alarm has gone off or Moscow is calling

them. This is the exterior shot of the docked Soyuz. This is the

docking plane where the two of them are touched together. The crew are

inside that ball. This is the capsule and Tim Peake's window that

he was looking through during the docking. This is the capsule that

they will ride home in in June. Seems to have calmed down. They are

making calls right now. Can you translate what they are

saying? They are reading through some numbers. They may be giving

data to Mission control. The language of the launch is Russian,

is the language of the International Space Station Russian as well? The

official language is English but that does not make everybody

bilingual, especially the people on the ground, so we always work in a

mixture. The Soyuz is a Russian ship, it flew in Russian. The

station is mostly English but it is very much multilingual. What time

zone does it observe? It is a compromise between Moscow and

Houston, because of all the people that work shift work at mission

control so they settled on Greenwich mean Time. They are on the same time

as London. Is this usual? Whenever you are crossing any particular

threshold of event, you want to make sure you understand everything in

advance. It sounded like they needed some day to read down and I'm not

sure where the data is coming from, I have not heard any context. So you

have no idea how long this will take? They seem to have stopped

dashing around with camera lenses. They have not called it off yet. By

the fact they are waiting, it indicates it is pretty soon. We can

return to this but we will just have a look at what makes the

International Space Station one of the most impressive things that

humans have ever built. The International Space Station is

the largest man-made object in space. It took 13 years, 16

countries more than 115 separate space flights, or 100 spacewalking

astronauts and one robotic arm. To put together the most expensive

simple object ever built. What does $100 billion get you? 14 modules,

containing three laboratories, two toilets, one gymnasium, a bit more

usable space than your average five bedroom house, and one incredible

view. The figure we mentioned there is

$100 billion. What are you getting for your $100 billion these days? Of

course it is 100 billion invested over the 25 years we have been

working on the space station. For me, it is several different things.

It is a laboratory which does not exist on Earth. We have run almost

2000 experiments up there over the last 15 years. It is an observatory

of the universe which is not just temporary but permanent and above

the atmosphere. It is an observatory of the world which goes around the

world 16 times a day and if we are trying to understand changes about

our planet, that is a wonderful perspective. It is also our first

permanent step as a species away from the planet. It serves all

different purposes as well as being an amazing symbol of cooperation.

How important is the engineering, the fact we have built a large

structure in the Earth's orbit? It is like when a little kid is sailing

its sailboat in a pond remotely. At some point a person starts to sail a

sailboat up and down the coast and then they invent and learn and study

and figure out all the things they need to do, so that maybe someday

they can sail out of sight of land. The station has been orbiting the

earth, as if we were sailing within sight of land. What do you make the

hole out of? How would you navigate? What food do you need? How would you

make a toilet that will last forever? How do you recycle water?

How do you recycle oxygen? It is the main crucible test-bed which allows

us to grind out the lessons which eventually led us to the moon. I

hope it is a pre-waxed it to when we will see an astronaut on Mars -- a

prerequisite. I think we will go from there to the moon so we still

have the chance to come home in three days if we need be. Obviously,

we will return to this the minute we see the hatch doors open. There is

some activity there. Many of you have asked how you can spot the

space station. It is surprisingly easy. Here is stargazing's Lucie

Green on the roof of the Science Museum. I am up here with members of

the public and one of temp is a former teachers. We are biting our

fingernails waiting for the hatch to open. Having watched the launch live

earlier today, we were hoping to spot the space station go directly

overhead a couple of hours ago. But unfortunately the great British

weather worked against us and we were clouded out. You can probably

tell it is raining quite heavily now. But if you have clear skies

where you are and you want to go out and spot the space station, it is

very easy to do. All you have to do is find out when to go and look and

where. There are plenty of websites which can help you with that

information. We will come back to Lucie later.

The hatch as started to open here. We have opened the station hatch but

you can still see the face of the Soyuz Hatch so we have one of the

two doors opened. What we are waiting for now is for Yuri to turn

the same ratcheting mechanism on his side and then retract and stow the

doors of the hatch safely out of the way so that the first of the Soyuz

crew, Tim Peake's crew can come through and float into the space

station. That will mean Yuri in the Soyuz is the commander. Perhaps the

information was something to do with the problems in docking said they

wanted to get all the data from the Soyuz system so they could

troubleshoot what went wrong with the thrusters so that may have

delayed them but they are broke close now to the final step. We are

obviously focusing on this. We will, if we can, go back to Lucie and say

how you can see the International Space Station. We will focus on that

in Stargazing as well. It is interesting that you said you think

it is a thrust the problem but we don't know, the point is this

spacecraft has got to work again because it has detect someone back

to earth which is why they are being careful now. We need this Soyuz to

bring Tim and his crew back in June that it needs to be ready every

single day, 24 hours a day, so that if there was an emergency on-board,

it is their lifeboat, at any moment the crew could have to jump back

into the Soyuz so they do not want to have questions about the health

of the vehicle so I know Moscow will be working really hard to

troubleshoot exactly what caused the docking problem so they know they

can safely undock and returned to Earth at any moment in the next six

months. Did not like a shift change, how many are there usually on-board?

With the Soyuz there are groups of three. You could have six which it

will be for the next several months and it could be up to nine,

depending on how we do the crew swaps. Typically, on-board the

spaceship there are two toilets and six crew members, so it is a pretty

good balance! We will go back to the Science Museum Ruth and back to you,

Lucie. Hello again. Now is a great time to

think about going and spotting the space station. There are a variety

of websites you can use and they are all linked from the Stargazing page.

Armed with that information, a couple of weeks ago I went with a

couple of families to watch the space station flying over.

I have come to meet some space fans who have read about rockets and

spacecraft 's many time in their books but have never seen a real

life working spaceship until now. Who here likes spaceships? Now,

tonight we are going to be able to see a real working spaceship, so are

you ready to do some spaceship watching? Yes! When the space

station passes over the UK, it always appears in the West and heads

east across the sky. Those websites which tell you when you can spot the

space station say it is due to appear tonight in the south-west at

exactly 6:41pm. When the space station comes up it will come up in

that part of the sky, so we want to look out for something which is very

bright and moving quite fast. How do we know it is not an aeroplane

flying over? The way to spot the difference is the fact that the

space station doesn't have any flashing lights. It has lights but

they are very faint. We don't see the space station because of the

lights it has, we see it because the solar panels are flecked in the

sun's lights. Even though it is dark down here, the space station is so

high up that it is still bathed in sunlight so the best time to see it

is always around dusk or dawn. It will come up like this and then

up and over the top of the moon. I think I have spotted it. Over to

your right and up. There it is, there it is! Excellent. That is the

International Space Station. The ISS shines brighter than any other

satellite passing ever because it has bigger solar panels reflecting

the sun's light. Although it is moving at 17,500 miles an hour, you

can usually see the space station for around two to five minutes. The

space station is disappearing. I think we should wave goodbye. See

you next time. You have not missed anything while you were away. So Gay

has his arms -- Sergei has his arms folded. This is the space station

moving across the face of the sun. What on Stargazing Live in January

and we will tell you how. This question wanting to know how many

personal items he was allowed to take up with him. We are allowed to

take 1.5 kilograms up on the Soyuz spacecraft. It contains lots of

items you might want to give out to other people like patches, pins and

LAN yards, all the great things you can say have been flown in space. In

terms of personal possessions, I have a great book that Helen Sharman

has given me, as well as things from my own family. It is an honour to

have Helen Sharman with us, the first UK astronaut in 1991. Helen,

first of all, what is special about this book? It is a copy of the book

that actually Tim has taken to space. It is one I was given just

before my space launch. It is signed by Gagarin. I took it with me into

space and the whole crew signed it. I brought it back and have been

looking after it carefully ever since. When Tim asked me recently if

there was anything of mine he could take into space for me, this book

seemed the obvious choice. We're hoping he and his crew will sign it

and give it the ISS stamp. White and it will be a tradition for astronaut

in the future to sign this book. -- it will be. How long was your

mission? Eight days altogether. Not like today. You had a full two days.

We also had manual docking. It is like, anything I can do... You said,

pretty much that is what happened to us. You went in for an automatic

docking. We had to do a manual docking. In the old days, we did not

have these fancy systems. It was either manual or automatic, nothing

in between. We converted to manual. From 200: it is where we self

steered outweighed the space station. You have both been on Mir,

the Soviet station. Is it like an old shed compared...? What really

delighted me about Mia is the shuttle had not been going there to

bring back equipment, it had accumulated old scientific equipment

and empty containers. As you floated through Mir, the wind currents

through your body, it was like bells clanging behind you. It was like

gentle cowbells with you whether you went. Not that this should turn into

a Monty Python sketch, you did describe this as being luxurious.

You can phone home. We had no GPS phone. We had no e-mail or internet

this was 1991. Communications with the ground were very limited. We

could only speak to the ground when we were over the soviet union. Over

Japan, that was it. No communications until we came back

around the other side of the Earth and the soviet union again. That gap

between you, there were British astronauts who had to get dual

nationality. Why the gap? What do you hope for the future? The gap is

because Britain is a country, the Government has not funded human

space flight, not since before my space flight. The Government wanted

a set of the commercial mission, an Anglo -Soviet mission. It was ahead

of its time. It was still not quite there. They were still not funding

back in 1991. It has taken this time. We now have an astronaut and

we should be looking forward from this. It is really positive that

we're prepared to change our minds and find something like this. It is

great positive for the longer-term future. It is a statement of intent

we have done this. We hope we would be part of the space station and

then beyond. I hope so. All we have done is fund one space flight. We

have not got any funding to last after that. We are funding human

space flight programmes for another couple of years. He will not get

another space flight in another couple of years. We need the funding

to continue. We are building up a body of science expertise in the UK

around human space flight. Engineering, our industry, is

getting projects through Europe because we are funding the space

flight. I hope very much we continue to fund the European Space Agency.

Maybe Tim get a second flight and more return for our science and

industry. Four times this year the space station has had to change

orbit to avoid pieces of space rubbish. This space debris is a big

hazard for the space station as Chris explains. Dead rocket

boosters... Spent radioactive material from satellites, even a

fellow astronaut's glove. We have left an awful lot of junk in space

over the decades. So, as an astronaut, I am grateful for places

around the world like this. This is the chill Bolton Observatory. With

this, the UK space agency can track our space junk. What we have

realised over many years, although the universe is potentially

infinite, the space around the Earth is very finite. It shows you a

simulation of what we can see in orbit. These range in size from

something the size of a mobile phone or the way up to a space station.

Over half a million pieces of debris are tracked from Earth. The problem

is not just that it is crowded up there, it is that all these objects

are hurtling above at over 15,000 miles an hour. That sounds alarming

but we have actually got a pretty good handle on where the big stuff

is. With enough notice, we can move the ISS to a slightly different

orbit to avoid it. It is the stuff we cannot track that really worries

astronauts. Because, sooner or later, we are probably going to

venture outside the ship with just a space suit on. That is when the

objects like this become a threat. This one millimetre steel ball is

what most space junk looks like. Although it is tiny, it is

potentially lethal. To show how deadly it could be, we need one of

the most powerful guns in Britain. This is a piece of plastic, a

polycarbonate, typically used in space, for example as a shield

across the visor and astronaut might wear. We're going to show a small

particle heading towards it. Will the visor survive? A one millimetre

object travelling at 14,000 miles an hour has come straight through the

front. It has kept going and it's what is potentially an astronaut on

the far side. What can we do about the risk? Not much. There is a lot

of debris but space is huge and Pfizer 's are pretty small.

Fortunately, the odds are very much in our favour. And, let's face it,

we would not be astronauts if we ran from every danger, would we? We have

we would not be astronauts if we ran still been watching in anticipation.

We have seen the commander. You have said it is not entirely that is a

comfortable place. In gravity, your handset out in front of you. It is

common, the way they are crossing their arms and putting arms behind

their head. The blood does not drain out. They float with hands around

their knees to keep out of people's way. Relaxing posture becomes

different. White Rabbit talking about space debris, we have a couple

of photographs you took on a spacewalk. -- Talking about space

debris. This big solar array, if you look really closely, this looks like

a bullet hole. If you zoom in, there is the solar array. You can see some

bullet from the universe came right through. Regularly we get the camera

and do a survey so that we can better understand how much threat we

are under and how much we get a hole punched. Symantec or by law of

averages, things are going to hit a space station. -- By law of

averages. Occasionally, one of them has two hit us. Can you hear them

when you are on board? The bedroom is right against the hull. Once in a

while you hear the noise hitting the metal on the outside. It is reminded

you are not at home in bed. My bedroom window and had a meatier

impact. It happened the night before I got to the station. When you got

with Mir, did you go through the ritual? Just the same, a couple of

hours after docking. You are checking the seals so that nothing

is leaking. You're equalising the pressure. You do not want an opening

very fast of the cover. You would want to be able to open it. Is there

any chance we can speculate on what is happening now? The cameras are

out again. My best guess is they wanted Yuri to get some more data.

It looks like maybe Scott Kelly is getting close. Scott thinks we are

getting close. We will see. The flash gun is going off. Is that the

sign of somebody? There they are. Yes!

APPLAUSE Yes macro in the nick of time. That

is Tim Kopra arriving. There is Tim Peake. He is on board the

International Space Station. APPLAUSE

Finally. This is a great moment, isn't it? Even Yuri is smiling. The

biggest smile we have seen. I think we have sad Yuri. That is happy Yuri

right now. The journey that we saw start at 11am. That is the reaction.

That is wonderful. We have finally got the UK astronaut here. It shows

just how hard it is. It is not a guarantee, not a simple thing. Huge,

nation, technical and very personal. An incredible journey. It started at

11:03am. Fast by standards we are used to but they kept us on the

edge. They have done all of this after their launch date. A tough

day. The procedure now there will be a

safety briefing. They will turn a corner and all be heading down to

the Russian end here in the service module and also have a briefing and

a discussion about what to do if an emergency occurred. Space history.

There is Tim Peake. Hello, Tim! There are historic figures like Yuri

Gagarin. He seems in excellent form there. He looks great, wonderful to

see. He is moving his head from side to side. That is a good site. This

is his first time in zero gravity other than his training. He has gone

from his time in eight broom cupboard to the space station. We

hope we will capture the phone calls and we will not disappear before we

hear him say his first words from the International Space Station.

What is your feeling here? They look like they are about to talk. Scott

is hurrying them along as the commander. He recognises it has been

a long day for everybody. He wants to get his crew squared away. I

think they are about to start the calls. We are going to stay on air

to hear the calls. I don't know what is going to be next on BBC Two. It

will be delayed. Stay with us. This is Houston, are you ready for the

event? A new guy! Baikonur, this is Mission

control Houston, please call for a voice check. Station, I am with your

colleagues, family and friends in Baikonur. How would you hear me? We

read you. You guys look great. We will start off with the Yuri

Malenchenko contingent. Hi, it is so great to see you guys

up there, I want to congratulate you with the most amazing launch ever.

May you have a great successful mission and God bless you.

That was you we's wife. -- Yuri's wife.

Congratulations, Yuri, and all the rest of the crew. It was really

beautiful to watch and have a really fantastic mission.

Thank you. Yuri, a long journey starts with a small step, but you

made a big step today, so congratulations to you, Yuri, and

really well done to you and all the crew.

That was the director of the space station for many years.

Congratulations, that won, on a wonderful journey and docking. I

hope the journey continues with much success. Here is my wife, Eleanor.

Congratulations, Yuri. I hope you and the crew have a wonderful trip.

Thank you. STUDIO: You said Yuri is a few words

and he certainly is! Congratulations. We look forward to

celebrating with you after your mission is completed. God bless you.

STUDIO: That is Yuri's daughter. He is a man of three words, yes, thank

you! He will want to rest after that.

Tim, this is dawn. We had a great day to day but I think you had a

better one. It was a beautiful launch. Thank you, we enjoyed the

ride and we have been on station here for about three minutes now. It

is very nice to be here! Hi, dad, it is Jacqueline. Hello,

beautiful. It was a beautiful launch today. I love you and I hope you

have an amazing next six months. STUDIO: You can hear the time lag.

Thank you. You said they will get an opportunity for more private chats

later? Guess, as soon as they can, they will get settled in their

quarters and call their families individually.

Thanks, sun, so glad you could watch it.

They are making us wait for Tim. High, the Yuri, Tim and Tim. This is

the director of EFA. Tim, you selected the window seat, what did

you see? That is unfortunate! We still have

audio. They are just getting his microphone ready, probably. We have

a frozen picture. Right at the point that Tim Peake was going to speak!

Seems like we have lost the audio as well. Tim Peake's family are still

waiting to speak. Patiently. They are very relieved. The families did

not use to be allowed at the launch site. They said goodbye to two weeks

before the launch and that was it. It is really great that the families

can be involved with them. I think it really helps. That is Rebecca,

Tim Peake's wife in the scarf in the middle of the picture. She will be

more frustrated than us. She has waited all this time. There tends to

be communications blackouts. They switch satellites. You are racing

around the world so fast that whatever satellite you are using,

you have to log onto another one. There are dropouts all the time.

When Helen went there were dropouts most of the time. Now there are

still gaps where we do not have communication with the ground. It is

frustrating for everybody. I hope you can hear me now. We have

locked onto a new satellite. There is some reaction now. Tim Peake, you

selected the window seat, what did you see?

It was a beautiful launch and we launched straight into it and got on

with the work but that first sunrise was absolutely spectacular and we

also got the benefit of a moonrise as well which was a beautiful thing.

High, Tim, this is David Parker from the UK space agency. Congratulations

on a brilliant launch. I think the whole country has got behind you and

is enjoying the mission so far. My question is, what would you like to

say to all of the young people who watched the launch today? Hello,

David, good to talk to you. I hope they had a good launch. I hope you

enjoyed the show. Hello, Tim, it is Rebecca here. It

was fantastic to watch that launched today. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

There are quite a few parties going on the ground. Your launch has been

celebrated by everybody down here. I'm glad you had a good night. Yes.

We love you. Hello, Tim, it is mum. High, mum! Hello, Tim. I think you

would call today expect that he lived day in the office. -- a

spectacular day in the office. I think we had a great night in the

office, that is the shore. Everybody sends their love and I hope you have

a wonderful time. Bye for now. Thank you very much and love to everybody

back home. Hi, it is dad. I wonder if your twin

Tim enjoyed the little surprise you had for him on take-off. We both got

each other there. There were too many surprises going on before

take-off. Crew on the International Space

Station, we will wrap it up. You have had a long day. You all look

great. We look forward to your half-year on board the International

Space Station. With that, I will turn us back to the crew at face

macro. -- Baikonur. APPLAUSE

Tim Peake and his first words from the International Space Station

after an incredible day. An incredible day. Tim will be spending

six months orbiting the earth. Many of you will be wondering what his

thoughts are on how the International Space Station might

affect him. I think the experience will change

me, give me a different perception of planet Earth. To look at planet

Earth from space is a remarkable thing. I think it is hard to know

how you will change when you see that. Nevertheless, just orbiting

planet Earth for six months will probably have quite a profound

effect. I will just try and enjoy every moment of it, but just

experiencing the launch and the re-entry and living and working in

space will be a wonderful thing. Well, we have run late in honour of

that. The story will continue on BBC News if you want to see more of

Tim's incredible journey. I hope you enjoyed the show, we certainly did.

Thanks, Chris, thanks, Helen. We will be back and hear more from Tim

in the New Year. We will be running Stargazing Live for three nights in

January. We will be chatting to Tim live from space and finding out what

he will get up to on-board. And we will our wannabe astronaut John

Bishop through the paces. We will also have some incredible images

from Pluto and a rundown of some of the biggest things in the universe.

For continuing coverage from the space station, switch over to our

colleagues on BBC news, but from everybody here, goodbye! Goodbye!

Treetop dining doesn't always go to plan.