 My next guest is Helen Sharman, who is a chemist and Britain's first-ever astronaut. Since her trip to the MIR space station back in 1991, she has been a brilliant skilled science communicator, enthusing and owing audiences all around the world. Britain's first astronaut is in space. The Soyuz spacecraft carrying Helen Sharman and two Soviet cosmonauts was launched successfully this afternoon from the Baikunua Space Center in the Soviet Union. Helen, it's such an honour to have you here. Can you tell us a bit about your, I guess, your science background to start off with? Well, I ended up studying a science degree after school, but I really couldn't decide what to choose. I love animals, music, foreign languages and sciences, and I liked all of that at school, and I was really, you know, which one to study. And honestly, I wasn't very adventurous, so I didn't really think much about the stuff that you don't know from school, like the engineering subjects. So I was thinking, well, if I did chemistry, it was kind of an in-between science, and perhaps I could go one way or the other. So long as it was a STEM subject, then that would open options for me later on that might not be open to me if I'd done something else. So yeah, I decided chemistry, that's what I studied. And, I mean, what an option it opened to you. Talk about this advert that you had on the radio. So yeah, I was working for Mars Confectionery actually at the time, which is a great name for a company if you're going to be an astronaut. I've got no idea when I started working there that that's what I was going to be. So yeah, I was just driving my car home from work as you do listening to the radio. Though I had one of those radio stations in the car or radio sets where you push the button and the next station up the dial kind of just dials in automatically tunes in. And I kept pushing the button trying to find some decent music. And then I heard an announcement. Astronaut wanted no experience necessary. And it described this brand new opportunity, never been around for people like me in Britain, just to apply to be an astronaut. There hadn't been a British astronaut before. And so this was a special space mission created for the first British astronaut to go and do experiments on a space station. And wow, what an opportunity. And it was going through my mind, yeah, it had to be fantastic. And the first criterion was you must have a STEM subject education. Didn't matter what STEM subject, as long as it was a STEM subject. Yeah, I've got chemistry, I could do that. But they'll not choose me. Of course they won't choose me, right? They're bound to choose somebody who's military or pilot. And I was going to ask like, did you have like, I don't know, were you super athletic and into sports or something? I was reasonably fit and healthy, but nothing, you know, I didn't run marathons. I was no Olympian or anything like that. I just enjoyed keeping fit and doing bits of sport every now and again. And that way, we had to be reasonably healthy and fit. And that was, medicals were part of the selection. And also to be quite familiar, I suppose, with other foreign languages, because we had to learn to speak the Russian language very quickly, because all the training was going to be done in the Russian language. So the ability to learn Russian was going to be important. And because I had previously loved learning foreign languages, you know, when I was at school and I couldn't decide what to choose. So actually, it all came in the end. It was almost like the perfect job, even though I could never have imagined when I was at school, when I was choosing my degree, that choosing that STEM subject could lead to something like that. And did the music ever come back in? I took some music into space with me. Actually, recently, I've been able to play keyboard with Richard Hawley. Yes, in some of the live concerts in Sheffield, absolutely fabulous. So it does come useful sometimes. No, I love the idea that it's not just the science, but also, you know, the language is the music and everything that kind of plays into making you an all-rounded astronaut, really. You can't be a boring person in space, right? You're going to really cheese off all your crewmates if you're really dull. And I think it's important not to take yourself too seriously as well. You've got to know when it's important to focus, to do what you need to do, and then, you know, to relax and enjoy being a person, being an individual with your crewmates, and trusting each other. And you need to have both of those things going on. Was there any very scary moment while you were on your way there or on your way back or there, in fact? I would say never really scary because we understood what was going on and what we had to do. The most, I suppose, unexpected moment was when the alarms all went off not long after I'd arrived on the space station and it turned out that we didn't have enough electrical energy in the batteries because the solar panels hadn't been directed towards the sun as well as they should have done and some were masked by a new module that had just been added to the space station. And after we arrived, you know, it was thought that maybe we'd just have enough electrical energy to pull us through when we were around the dark side of the earth. We didn't. And so the emergency signals went off and the commander sort of floats off to the control panel and immediately comes back to everybody and explains what's going on. Yes, okay. So we just have to make sure we can move into fresh air because you don't get the normal air circulation currents that we do on earth. And so you need to make sure you don't suffocate in your own buildup of carbon dioxide. So you keep moving around. But because of our training, we knew that. And then once we come back around the earth into the sunshine again, so the panels absorb solar energy, electrical energy. The lights came on because the lights had all gone off, right? Or fans had gone off to try and conserve power. So that was supposed the most unexpected. That was intense. That sounds, I mean, I mean, for me, for someone who doesn't really like flying and doesn't love height, I mean, the idea of being kind of shot off the earth's surface at high speed doesn't sound particularly appealing. If you're trained, you know what you've got to do. And I think that's the thing is that I would be scared if somebody told me I was going into space tomorrow because I wouldn't know what I had to do. I wouldn't know the mission. I wouldn't know that particular spacecraft possibly. But if your training is good, if you really, you know, we're scared of the unknown, I think. So if you're scared of something, I always say, get the knowledge. Yeah, yeah. And how long did you have to train for the eight days that you spent in space? Eight days in space, 18 months training. Now, 18 months is quite a short training period for astronauts who are going to be career astronauts. So if you're going to be, let's say, a European space agency employed astronaut, then they train for five years or more before they even get their first sniff of a spaceflight, some for much longer. But then they're training for all sorts of different missions. Mine was already very, very specific when what we were going to have to do in space, the mission was assigned. So yeah, 18 months. Brilliant. And tell me a little bit about what you've been doing since those eight days, because I'm sure you're fed up of getting questions about these eight days many years ago now, but tell me what you're doing now. It's lovely to talk about it still. And I know partly because it was fun time for me, but if people are interested, then that's nice. It's nice to talk about something, because it wasn't just my mission. It was a British space mission. So I do feel I should share it. But no, subsequently, it's been great to get involved in science communication that not ever thought I would want to do that. I was very, very shy. Even in the space, I was quite shy. So I didn't mind sort of chatting on the radio, even doing some TV work was fine, because if it was a TV camera, it didn't feel like loads of people. But when I was first asked to go and give a speech in front of a large audience, oh, my goodness, I was so worried about that. But then I started to go into some schools and I'd set up a program of sort of talks around schools not long after my space flight. And I thought really it was really to tell them about my space flight. And the teachers were saying, well, yeah, this is great. But actually, it's so good for the science. And this is the curriculum for this age group and so on and so on. And the teachers were brilliant at helping me to understand how to turn a story about space into what's really basic science. So whether you're talking electrolysis or convection or radiation, all of that is Newton's laws, you know, chemical proportion, there's so much that it's just basic science. And so I just thought, my goodness, yeah, this is something that will be really a useful thing to put my mission to. So yeah, so I started thinking and talking about science. Bringing science to life, what an amazing thing to do. Yeah, it's been great fun. That's great. Helen, we've talked a bit about that feeling of being blasted off into space. But what was it like coming back? Returning to Earth is actually a bigger ride in some respects, because you get more G of deceleration. So we had about five and a half G of deceleration coming back through the atmosphere. It's only about four and a half during the launch. And it's quite bumpy as well, as you come through different layers of the atmosphere. And these start to see glow around the outside of the spacecraft, which is the plasma building up around the outside. So as the upper layers of the atmosphere get really hot, they get charged, and they start to give off this light. So yeah, it's quite an exciting time, really. And then the parachutes open up. And then finally, just about a meter and a half above the ground, we get some retro rockets just to make the landing a bit softer. But it is still a bit of a bump. And did you came down on land as opposed to water? Yes, exactly dry land. So that was where we'd intended to land. So SpaceX will bring their crew back into water and that's planned. But we had planned to come on dry land. And then you, I don't know, you come out of the module, and then you kind of step back onto Earth. What is that like? I suppose it's getting used to feeling balance again for me. So I've been into space for eight days. It wasn't long enough to really have weak muscles. And so to feel physically like I couldn't really stand up very much. Some astronauts feel quite faint as well, if they've been in space a long time, because suddenly blood is pulled away down towards their feet away from their heads. But that wasn't for me an issue. It was more just a balance. I felt a bit wobbly. When I wanted to walk, my leg felt really heavy. So I had a natural tendency to lean over when I picked my leg up. And then I put it down. And then when I picked my other leg up, that felt heavy. So I was kind of walking in this wobbly way. It took about 20 paces to retrain my brain. Pretty quick. I mean, to be honest, considering what a huge change physically it is, isn't it? So adaptable. I mean, human beings, human bodies are fabulous. And what was it like as a woman in space? Was there sexism surrounding your lung? And so I mean, one of the things I do remember is when the press came out a few years ago, when Tim Peek went up into space, they were calling him the first British astronaut. And I was shouting at the telly going, no, he's the first male astronaut if you want to do that. He's a second British astronaut. But yeah, what was your experience from that? Well, yes, it wasn't totally with Tim Peek. It wasn't Tim's fault. It wasn't the media's fault either. It was the UK Space Agency who actually told the media that Tim Peek was the first British astronaut. So yes, that was a bit of a naughty thing to do, putting it mildly. But no, in terms of my space life, it was great. I mean, I'm trained with the Soviets. The Soviets, communists, had had women train drivers, engineers, astronauts. They knew they needed their women as part of the workforce way in advance of people in Western Europe waking up to the same idea. So it was great. I mean, they have a different kind of culture socially. So, you know, men would take my coat off for me and hang it up. Very nice. What about your space suit? No, my own space suit. But yeah, but basically when it came to work, it was I was just treated as one of the crew and that was lovely. And that's a really good way of looking at it. Now, tell me about alien life. Do you think alien life exists? It must do somewhere. I think we would be quite an arrogant species, wouldn't we, to think that, you know, only, only us in terms of intelligent life in the whole universe with all of those stars, all of those planets, surely somewhere, whether or not we'd recognize it as intelligent, whether or not it really is made of carbon. I know a lot of scientists say, oh, carbon complex, you know, so it has to, has to be carbon based. But I just wonder, could it possibly be silicon? And then other people will say, well, what's about the temperatures? Yeah, but we don't know what the temperatures and conditions are in many places. So I think somewhere there must be, but certainly it would be so exciting to find evidence of some sort of life, whether or not we'd call it alien or intelligent. So we have a little surprise for you now. We have a question for you from Professor Brian Cox. Should we have a listen? Helen, we saw the launch of Starship, right, this monumental SpaceX rocket that's supposed to be the future of a crude space exploration. And it kind of demolished the launch pad and it didn't work very well. So what's your feeling? How optimistic are you that these giant spacecraft are going to be voyaging out to the moon and perhaps even onwards to Mars? Let's say within the next 10 years or so. That's an interesting question, isn't it, from Brian? Yes. So I think the future is for a lot of commercial spacecraft, whether they're giant ones, as Brian said, or whether actually they're going to be quite a few other smaller ones as well. And we're going to need a mixture of them. But yes, I do think that ultimately we will have a few giant ones going off into space. And the giant ones will be needed to go perhaps further than we've ever been before. And I suppose that's Elon Musk's dream is to be able to get his rocket to Mars. But yeah, we're going to need a variety of different launches, because space is becoming so much more accessible, affordable for a lot of researchers. And I can see a time when it's not just people who are astronauts who go into space, but people who are researchers, they might be employed in industry or by some institution. And they will need to do their research in space. So a lot more of us will have the chance to experience it. I mean, that sounds brilliant. I'm a big Star Trek fan. So I can't wait to get onto some kind of spaceship and go for a bit of an exploration. It's been absolutely brilliant to chat to you, Helen. Thank you. It's been my pleasure.