British astronaut, Tim Peake, sends final tweet before blasting off on mission to International Space Station,

“Hopefully in a six-month mission - 173 days on orbit - I hope to get plenty of opportunities to do just that. “You know, we’ve been so busy focused on this mission that I kind of forgot Christmas was just over a week away.
Tonight he will watch – as is tradition - a Russian “cult” movie “White Sun of the Desert” which is billed as a Russian “Eastern” and features a desert hero vanquishing bandits. Before leaving the Cosmonaut hotel to “suit up” this morning he will head out to the launch pad and will comply with another tradition by signing his hotel room door. The former Army helicopter pilot will be travelling to the ISS with one of the most experienced cosmonauts in the Russian Space Agency programme - Yuri Malenchenko.
The trio is completed by US Army colonel Timothy Kopra, who has flown into space once - on the space shuttle in 2009. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon sent his best wises to Major Peake. During a visit to Portsmouth Naval Base, he said: “It’s a big moment to see a British astronaut, a former serving officer, blasted off into space. "He is looking forward to it and I think the whole country will be getting behind him.” Peake joins an illustrious – and very small – group of Brits who have been into space.Technically he will be the first since Helen Sharman back in May 1991. Michael Foale, Piers Sellers and Nicholas Patrick all born in the UK flew as US citizens. The last “Brit” in space was Richard Garriott who was born in Cambridge to American parents who flew on a private mission in 2008. Peake, an Army Corps test pilot is a graduate of Portsmouth University. He went to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and joined the Royal Greenjackets. He beat 8,000 candidates for one of the six places on the ESA programme.

Landing of space craft video,