Students' delight at meeting astronaut Tim Peake

Pupils from Westbourne Primary and Chichester High School have said meeting Tim Peake was like '˜a dream come true'.
British astronaut Tim Peake during a Q&A with students from his two former schools, Westbourne Primary and Chichester High School for Boys, at the Novium Museum in his hometown of Chichester, West Sussex. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday January 27, 2017. See PA story SCIENCE Peake. Photo credit should read: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire SCIENCE_Peake_135389.JPGBritish astronaut Tim Peake during a Q&A with students from his two former schools, Westbourne Primary and Chichester High School for Boys, at the Novium Museum in his hometown of Chichester, West Sussex. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday January 27, 2017. See PA story SCIENCE Peake. Photo credit should read: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire SCIENCE_Peake_135389.JPG
British astronaut Tim Peake during a Q&A with students from his two former schools, Westbourne Primary and Chichester High School for Boys, at the Novium Museum in his hometown of Chichester, West Sussex. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday January 27, 2017. See PA story SCIENCE Peake. Photo credit should read: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire SCIENCE_Peake_135389.JPG

Students from the ESA astronaut’s former schools were in for a surprise today as he made a special visit to the Novium Museum.

Barnaby Impey-Glue, 11, from Westbourne Primary, said he felt ‘so lucky’ to meet Tim Peake.

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He said: “I just feel like I am going to faint to see and real astronaut who is famous world-wide.

“It is like a dream come true to me.”

“I am so lucky, I am even going to get a signature that I can take home and show my friends and family.

“I am a very lucky person.”

Jake Funnell, 10, said: “I feel overwhelmed it is just amazing a famous astronaut come to his home town to see all of us.”

Year six teacher at the primary school, Ami Collins, said: “This is a really big deal for the children, it’s encouraged them to do lots of learning about Peake at home and it has helped our curriculum.

“They find him fascinating.”

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Tim Peake said he felt ‘very humbled’ to be a role model to the pupils and hopes that he can encourage them all to find ‘their spark inside to set them on the road to success’.

Alex Halfacree, 15, from Chichester High School, said: “It is really inspiring to be here and have Tim answer all our questions.”

Lydia Cronin, 17, said: “It is really interesting to here Tim talk about his time in space, we were all really excited when we found out this morning we would see him.”

Yasmine Maskatiya, headteacher for Chichester High School, said they had been looking forward to the day Peake returned for ‘so long’.

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“It means so much to the pupils because he came to their school, they have followed him so closely,” she said.

“It has really brought it home to them what they can aspire to do.”

Councillor Gillian Keegan said she was ‘thrilled’ to have Tim Peake at the Novium to see the exhibition, and said that if more people come to the museum to learn about Tim Peake and space it will be worth ‘one thousand times more than what we invested in it’.

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