The first British astronaut to be selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) in the first such contest it ran since 1992 is 37-year-old Army Air Corpse test pilot Timothy Peake, a veteran of helicopter flights. He was only told about his selection into the agency on Monday, when he and other five future astronauts were notified that their applications were the ones that passed the selection process, in which officials from the European agency analyzed more than 8,400. The pilot said that he was “amazed” and “privileged” by his selection, the BBC News reports.

“I had a boyhood dream like many people but the reality always sort of holds you back,” he said on Monday, after he learned that his candidacy had been accepted. He added that, like millions of children worldwide, he had hoped of going out into space since he was only a little boy, but that, over the years, he became convinced that his dream would come true at some point. “You think it will never come true, so in my case I'm obviously extremely fortunate that it has – I'm in a very privileged position,” he shared.

Alongside Peake, five others have entered ESA's ranks recently: Thomas Pesquet (France), Samantha Cristoforetti and Luca Parmitano (Italy), Alexander Gerst (Germany) and Andreas Mogensen (Denmark). In the case of the UK, the decision was somewhat unexpected, on account of the fact that, for the past few years, governments had considered human space exploration to be too costly, and had therefore focused the bulk of their attention and funding on robotic exploration instead. As a direct consequence, British citizens have had little opportunities to receive the kind of training usually required from them to pass the agency's rigorous application selection process.

In the 18 years he spent in the British Air Force, Peake has accumulated over 3,000 flight hours, mostly on Apache combat helicopters. He also possesses a degree in flight dynamics, which he intends to put to good use during future ESA missions to the ISS, or even the Moon. “Yes, that would be the ultimate dream to be involved in lunar exploration, but the objectives (...) are very challenging and it would be rewarding to be involved in any spaceflight,” he added.

The 18-month basic training was scheduled to begin on September 1st, the now-astronaut told the British news agency. After that is completed, and he is assigned to one of the seven missions to the ISS ESA has scheduled until 2020, he will begin another, mission-specific training sequence. “Training will include becoming fluent in Russian, which for me at the moment is the most daunting prospect,” he concluded.