Astronaut puts space back on agenda in Britain

LONDON — Britain has decided to boldly go where others have gone before.

More than half a century after Yuri Gagarin became the fifirst human in orbit, the U.K. is experiencing a surge of space mania thanks to its fifirst offifficial astronaut — a soft-spoken pilot named Tim who will spend some of his six-month stint on the International Space Station attempting to brew a decent cup of tea in zero gravity.

Millions around the country paused in front of TVs and computer screens Tuesday to watch a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying Maj. Tim Peake and two other astronauts — Timothy Kopra of the United States and Yuri Malenchenko of Russia — blast offff from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Peake, a 43-year-old former army helicopter pilot, is not the fifirst Briton in space. Helen Sharman visited Russia’s Mir space station in 1991 on a privately backed mission and several British-born American citizens flflew with NASA’s space shuttle program.

But Peake is the country’s fifirst publicly funded British astronaut and the fifirst Briton to visit the International Space Station. The spacecraft docked successfully at the space station roughly six hours after liftoffffffffffff.

For decades, cost-conscious British governments declined to invest in human space flflight, confifining the U.K.’s space contribution to robotic missions.