Charlie Laing has been voted the winner of the Touchdown Zone, the fourth and final round of the I’m an Astronaut competition. Charlie goes on to join Tim Peake, and the winners from the Training, Launch, and Orbit Zones, in the final live chat, where the overall champion, and winner of the £500 prize will also be revealed.

Here’s what Charlie had to say to the students in the Touchdown Zone after they voted him the winner:

Hello!

What a great few weeks that was chatting to all of you and speaking about one of my favourite topics – space! The questions you came up with were fantastic and it was great to see how engaged and knowledgeable you were already about Tim Peake’s mission.

From aliens taking over our planet and the sun destroying our solar system to Tim’s poor bones and his liking of pizza and beer ; your questions were sometimes morbid, always original, and thought-provoking throughout. For that I thank you!

Also, thanks to the ‘I’m An Astronaut’ team who invited me to take part and did an awesome job planning, moderating, and generally making sure things ran smoothly.

I have to say the other four members of the ‘Astro Support Team’ made for an exciting competition between us, from answering all your questions online to testing the speed of their typing skills with our live chats each day. If was fun to do this with Vinita, Kirsty and Andrea, who I knew well before, and also members of the Columbus Operations team who I got to know for the first time. Space is a small world so I am sure we will all cross paths again soon

Tim is now back on Earth and I know he has inspired many of you to think about a career in science and space. This event was a great opportunity to show that, whilst Tim is just one person going into space, there are a whole team of scientists, researchers, engineers and controllers supporting him which in the future could include one of you!

To all the students who voted for me – thank you so much. If your questions and comments are anything to go by I’m sure we have some future space scientists and Martian explorers in your classes. So reach for the moon , even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars !

Charlie