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Tim Peake (born 1972) is a British military officer and astronaut. On 15 December 2015, he embarked on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS), becoming the second astronaut wearing the British flag in space, after Helen Sharman. After graduating from Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Peake served in various military roles between 1992 and 2009, accumulating 3,000 flying hours. He was then selected to join the European Space Agency's astronaut corps where he was trained and took part in missions such as in the Aquarius Reef Base, in which he spent twelve days underwater. During his mission to the ISS, Peake supported a spacewalk by two American astronauts before carrying out a spacewalk himself to replace a faulty sequential shunt unit on the station's solar arrays. He also participated in several UK events from space, such as delivering a new year's message broadcast on the BBC and remotely presenting an award to singer Adele in the Brit Awards 2016. Peake returned to Earth in June 2016, having completed 3,000 orbits of Earth, and retired from active service in 2023. This official NASA photograph of Peake was taken in 2013.Photograph credit: Robert Markowitz