Tim Peake's space capsule will live on at London's Science Museum
The museum won't just show it, it now owns it.
Tim Peake's voyage to the International Space Station (ISS) made plenty of headlines over the past year for good reason: he was the first British astronaut to explore space in over 20 years. While floating 220 miles above the earth, Peake took some time out to help the BBC make its first broadcast into space and completed a marathon, helping inspire millions of young children across the UK (and the world). In an attempt to build on that momentum, the Science Museum Group announced today that it has bought the spacecraft that made it all possible.
The vehicle in question is the Soyuz TMA-19M, a Russian-built spacecraft that carried Peake and his crewmates Yuri Malenchenko and Tim Kopra to (and from) the ISS almost a year ago. The craft needed refurbishing after coming back to Earth on June 18th, but still retains a lot of the singe marks it sustained during its re-entry into the atmosphere (which you can see above).
The Soyuz becomes the first "flown human spacecraft" to be acquired by the owners of London's Science Museum. It's set to expand upon the recent Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age exhibition, which became the museum's most successful exhibition ever. If you're looking for another reason to visit one of London's greatest archives, don't book your tickets just yet: details regarding the display won't be confirmed until a later date.
