First Briton in Space

While we’re waiting for Tim Peake to blast off to the International Space Station (ISS) to begin his Principia mission, I thought it might be fun to have a look at the first Briton in space – Helen Sharman, who was also the first woman to visit the Mir space station, in 1991.

Tim Peake will be the first Briton to visit the ISS, and will be encouraging school children across the UK to become astrobiologists, having teamed up with the RHS for a Rocket Science project looking at what happens to seeds (rocket [US: argulua]) exposed to space conditons.

Tim Peake is an official British astronaut, trained by ESA and sponsored by the British government. Helen Sharman took part in a commercial partnership with the Russian space agency, which unfortunately wasn’t very successful – she was the only Briton to fly up under the scheme.

The mission was called Juno, and since it hadn’t been properly funded by British commercial interests, Sharman got a bit short-changed in the science experiment department and mostly helped with Soviet experiments rather than having her own set (unlike Tim Peake, who has a range of activities tailored to him, including running a space marathon!). Of course, astronauts and cosmonauts are pretty much lab rats themselves, as one of the most important areas of research is how space affects the human body.

The Soviet space programme is nowhere near as well-documented as NASA’s, but according to David M. Harland, in The Mir Space Station: A Precursor to Space Colonization:

As the first woman to visit Mir, she was presented with a tiny bonsai tree on arrival.

Which is nice