Video preview of Tim Peake’s spacewalk

Britain’s first astronaut, Helen Sharman, received a congratulatory phone call from Tim Peake aboard the International Space Station during celebrations in London to mark the 25th anniversary of her historic mission to the Mir space station.

Have you ever seen the International Space Station (ISS)? It’s capable of exceeding Venus at its brightest and visible for up to 7 minutes as it crawls across the sky in an arc from west to east. Find out when and where to see some favourable passes of this 450-tonne, 109-metre-long spacecraft over the British Isles and Western Europe this week.

Physicists are gearing up to send a re-engineered science instrument originally designed for lofty balloon flights high in Earth’s atmosphere to the International Space Station next week to broaden their knowledge of cosmic rays, subatomic particles traveling on intergalactic routes that could hold the key to unlocking mysteries about supernovas, black holes, pulsars and dark matter.