LONDON - The man who became the first British astronaut to visit the International Space Station (ISS) said that he hopes the mission can inspire Britain's youth to explore Mars one day.
Tim Peake (43), a former army major, will start the mission for six months representing the European Space Agency (ESA) in December, a British citizen first went into space since Helen Sharman flew by plane Soviet space for eight days in 1991.
"After 24 years since Helen Sharman flew to the space station Mir, the Union Jack (British flag) will fly in space again," said Peake told reporters. "This means that no one can deter school-age students in the UK to be one of the first to set foot on Mars in the future."
Peake said he would bring a number of science experiments, including some medical research in which he would be "human experimentation."
Britons was selected as an astronaut in 2009 and will depart from the Russian cosmodrome, Baikonur in Kazakhstan. The mission is named Principia, taken from Isaac Newton's theory of innovative, Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which describes the main laws of gravity and motion.
England initially opted out of the program to include human space missions but to change its decision in 2012.
The space station is a laboratory in which the international crew of six people live and work while on the air at a speed of five miles per second, and orbits the Earth every 90 minutes.
The station was launched in 1998 and continuously occupied since November 2000. During that time, more than 200 people from 15 countries have visited the station.
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