A group of Glasgow schoolchildren from Baljaffray Primary School and Bearsden Academy had the opportunity to meet the world famous astronaut Tim Peake and took part in a question and answer session about his historic six-month stay on the International Space Station.
There certainly were some lucky youngsters who got to meet Astronaut Tim Peake when he visited Clyde Space in Glasgow, Scotland on Sunday, October 16.
Tim praised the company for establishing itself at the forefront of the space technology industry. The company is a rapidly growing $10 million dollar company with ambitions to secure a significant share of the $2.2 billion dollar small satellite market.
He said, “It’s great to see a company going from strength to strength.” During his visit, Tim met and answered questions from Baljaffray Primary School and Bearsden Academy on his historic six-month stay on the International Space Station.
Tim, who made history by becoming the first British astronaut to make a space walk, answered a range of questions including the demands and stress of preparing for the walk, the availability of water on board the station, the excitement of the launch and the scariness of landing back on Earth because it was then “that so many things can go wrong”.
When asked about returning to space he said, “I’d love to go back into space because there are so many exciting missions coming up.”
Clyde Space CEO Craig Clark, who presented Tim with a Clyde Space “Space is Awesome” T-shirt, said, “Tim and the Principia Mission have done a fantastic job to raise the profile of the UK space industry and I’m sure they see some fantastic talent coming and working in companies like Clyde Space as a result. It was terrific to have the UK’s very own astronaut in one of the most exciting, global space companies. It was also great to see the children who came along for the event being inspired by Tim’s stories and meet their hero in person."
Tim’s visit to Clyde Space was part of a post-flight tour of the UK. During the Principia mission, which took him on about 3,000 orbits of the Earth, he became the first UK astronaut to make a spacewalk. The British European Space Agency astronaut spent just over six months on board the International Space Station after launching from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan last December, the same location from which Scotland’s first satellite, designed and built by Clyde Space in Glasgow, was launched in 2014.
Over the last few years it has invested in product and process development, put in place the latest assembly and test facilities and announced international expansion plans.
It currently has more than 80 staff and is growing at rate of over 50 percent per year. there are currently an average of six spacecraft per month being produced at its Glasgow headquarters. https://www.clyde.space/latest/91-astronaut-tim-peake-touches-down-at-clyde-space