Tim Peake became the first British citizen admitted to he ESA's Astronauts corp in September 2009. In May 2010 Tim joined other Astronauts in training for his first Parabolic flight in a specially adapted Airbus A300 - not too unlike NASA's original C-131 Samaritain (more commonly known as the 'Vomit Comet' for its ability to induce violent illness).

In Untold History, Mark undergoes intensive training. Whilst there is no scene with this type of flight, he does experience weightless flight during pilot training in a '2nd generation Eurofighter'.

Find out more at the BBC or on Wikipedia.

US President Obama has announced today the cancellation of the Constellation programme which would have seen NASA returning to the moon. Some $9bn has already been spent on the project which was instigated in 2003 by the then President George Bush.

Obama said the project was "over budget, behind schedule and lacking innovation." The former two are a given with any major project these days so that is no surprise.

The Ares rockets, Orion crew module and all its designs will be consigned to the history archives. No doubt they will appear in other sci-fi novels like my own Untold History.

One good thing to come out of Obama's announcement is the extension of the ISS until at least 2020.

Find out more at the BBC or on Wikipedia.