Watch Tim Peake’s spacewalk live

Using a wide-angle lens, an astronaut aboard the International Space Station captured a dramatic near-cloudless view of north Africa and the Middle East.

British astronaut Tim Peake, along with Soyuz commander Yuri Malenchenko and outgoing space station skipper Tim Kopra, departed the International Space Station today aboard the Soyuz TMA-19M capsule and landed safely in Kazakhstan at 1016 BST (0916 GMT).

Tim Peake speaks to Astronomy Now’s Greg Smye-Rumsby about his historic mission to the International Space Station, scheduled for launch on 15 December 2015.