Tim Peake has a secret. There’s definitely something he isn’t telling us about his time careening 250 miles above the planet on board the International Space Station.
Well, that’s what his eyes seem to say as he laughs off the idea he’s hiding anything.
‘If I have a secret, I’m not going to share it,’ he says. ‘It’s probably something that doesn’t need to be written down in print or advertised anywhere.’
Disappointing.
‘Every astronaut has secrets, but they really are secrets,’ he adds. ‘Secrets as to some of the things we get up to, some of the jokes, some of the pranks – and maybe some of the mistakes we make.’
It’s almost hard to imagine an astronaut making a mistake. Not just because they’re the best of the best, consummate professionals on a whole other plane to the rest of us, but because when they do in the movies everything goes catastrophically wrong – and thus far the International Space Station has neither exploded nor crashed into the Moon.
Yet it seems they are human – and even Tim made a small space snafu.
‘I remember making a mistake on a Japanese experiment, and being mortified,’ he says. ‘Everything you touch on the space station is the culmination of years of people’s work, so you need it to be perfect.
‘And then I mixed up an experiment. Thankfully it didn’t have a huge impact.’
Just last week, one of the current team on board the ISS accidentally lost a tool kit while on a space walk. The bag is now making a lonely orbit around the planet.
It is comforting to know even astronauts can make the odd cock-up, and it is this element, the human element, that Tim has focused on in his latest – and ninth – book.
Space: The Human Story, reveals tales from our species’ adventures both in space and attempting to get there, from the training accident that almost killed Neil Armstrong to a near mutiny by one of the Apollo crews.
Blasting off into space can be hard to imagine. Arguing with the boss is not.
But making space relatable through the human condition was just one inspiration for the book. What happens next was another.
‘We’re in an exciting new era of space exploration,’ says Tim. ‘There’s a lot happening with Artemis, we’re sending the first crew for over 50 years back to the Moon in a few years’ time, so it seemed like a good time to look back at the astronauts of the space race and the Mercury era and bring it up to date.’
Certainly Nasa hopes there’ll be boots on the Moon again soon, but its 2025 timeline for Artemis III is looking increasingly hairy, particularly in light of the fact that Elon Musk’s Starship, which is set to deliver astronauts to the lunar surface, keeps blowing up.
‘If I’m going to be completely candid, I’d say 2025 is when Artemis II will launch,’ says Tim. ‘But Artemis III, the actual landing on the Moon, I personally think that will be no earlier than 2026.’
Starship, which self-destructed in spectacular fashion back in April, is the most powerful launch system ever developed – and like all things SpaceX, it looks a bit sexy.
That’s a vibe Musk is always striving for – so much so he brought in renowned Hollywood costume designer Jose Fernandez to make the company’s take-off and landing suits look a bit less clunky, more sleek – more, well, sci-fi.
‘I think they look fantastic,’ says Tim. ‘One thing that SpaceX does is design, and this kind of futuristic feel is very important to them. The space suits are a complete change, and from what I’ve seen they’re like something off a movie set.
‘Whether or not they’re the most practical suits I don’t know. From an astronaut’s point of view we don’t really care what they look like, they’ve just got to be comfortable.’
Tim could well experience them for himself some day soon. Shortly after we speak, the UK Space Agency announced it had agreed a deal for an all-British spaceflight mission. Rumour has it that Tim could come out of retirement to captain the mission, blasting off in a SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle wearing one of those suits.
Perhaps that was his secret.
Nevertheless, even without another mission under his belt, Tim has experienced more space than 9.99% of the population – fewer than 700 people have ever left our planet’s atmosphere.
Even fewer have enjoyed the privilege of a space walk, but in January 2016 he became the first British astronaut to complete the feat – something he says was the highlight of his career.
‘Certainly that is the moment I always go back to whenever I reflect on the mission,’ he says.
‘It’s a mix of emotions. We were very lucky and actually had ten minutes where we were told just to hang out – we got to the worksite early and had to wait for the Sun to go down because there was electricity coming down the solar panel.
‘So we were actually allowed time just to enjoy hanging out, which is unheard of.’
You wonder whether life now, speaking over Zoom with an ISS background rather than being in the real thing, is terribly boring after living in space. Walking on the ground like everyone else. Going to the shop for milk. Using a toilet isn’t a vacuum.
But if it is, Tim shows no sign. His enthusiasm for space, and sharing his stories, carry no hint of longing for that other life, just a boyish wonder at the incredible achievements of humankind that help blast him off the surface of the planet at 17,000mph.
Humankind mind, not mankind.
As he highlights in his book, space travel as we know it would not be possible but for the women working behind the scenes, even if it took decades and an Oscar-winning film for them to finally get the wide recognition they deserved.
However, possibly just as frustrating as not being recognised may have been the overt sexism faced by the wives of those early astronauts.
‘Did she cook for her family? How many times a week? Was she a drinker at all? Did the marriage seem sound?’
As Tim writes in the new book, these are just some of the ‘intrusive and outdated questions’ that the wives of early Nasa astronauts faced – from both the press, and the general public.
‘You have transport yourself back to the late Fifties and early Sixties and remember what society was like,’ he says. ‘Clearly today that’s completely changed in terms of the level of diversity we have, but it’s been a long journey to get here.’
In the US, that journey began with the Flats – first lady astronaut trainees. The programme was founded by Nasa’s Dr Randy Lovelace, but when the Russians beat them to the punch, crowning Valentina Terishova as the first woman to fly in space in 1963, the Flats were shelved.
It would be another 20 years until Sally Ride became the first female US astronaut – just one year after Russia sent its second woman into space, Svetlana Savitskaya.
‘It really has been a long journey to get where we are today,’ says Tim.
Where we are today is a mission sending the first woman and first person of colour to the Moon, as the Artemis programme – Artemis being the twin of Apollo – paves the way for the Lunar Gateway.
The ambitious plan aims to build a space station orbiting the Moon that will aid return visits to the lunar surface and, one day, missions to Mars.
But when humans do eventually land on Mars, will they be the only living thing? Nasa’s rovers seem to be inching closer to proving that life, albeit probably microscopic, once existed on the Red Planet.
Tim is one of the optimists, who feels certain life must be out there. Somewhere.
‘I think there will be intelligent life out there,’ he says. ‘We know the building blocks for life are floating around our solar system, and we’ve already found 5,000 exoplanets just in our local vicinity – and there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe.
‘The question is, how far away are they, and will we ever make contact?
‘Do we ever want to make contact?’
Yes. Yes we would Tim.
But then again, as with all things space, Tim is the one with first-hand experience – including his own ‘alien encounter’ on the ISS.
While floating around the ISS, out the window he saw three unidentified lights, which were quickly joined by a fourth. Was it a new space phenomenon? Some sort of communication from afar? A group of UFOs?
No, it was urine. Russian urine.
A leak in a neighbouring probe was ejecting waste into space, which promptly crystallised, sparkling as it passed the window.
Very disappointing.
Unless of course it’s just a cover story, and he’s actually hiding the biggest secret of all time…
Space: The Human Story, by Tim Peake, is out now
MORE : Tim Peake announces retirement as an astronaut
MORE : Tim Peake reveals he now wants to go to the moon as he launches first children’s book
MORE : Astronaut Tim Peake reveals unexpected similarities between himself and his ‘hero’ Tom Cruise
Get your need-to-know
latest news, feel-good stories, analysis and more
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
