In this cosmic adventure we are very lucky to have British European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake as our guide. Tim was the first British ESA astronaut to visit the International Space Station, launching on a Soyuz rocket on the 15th December 2015, with crewmates Tim Kopra and Yuri Malenchenko.
In my teenage years I learned about the 1969-72 Apollo missions to the Moon and developed an interest in space flight too.
My passion for exploring and adventuring, testing and challenging myself has always been with me.
So fast forward to the night before launch day of the Principia Mission.I spent the night in the traditional quarters in Baikonur, known as the Cosmonaut Hotel. Preparations began eight hours before launch, with final medical checks, travel to the launch site and getting into my pressurised spacesuit in four and a half hours before the big blast off into space.
Let's talk about the planets in their order from the Sun, as they appear on your tactile picture. You'll feel that it's made up of nine concentric circles. Feel around them to discover the raised dots of various sizes. These are the nine planets of the solar system and the lines show their orbits, or the paths they follow, to travel around the Sun.
There have been so many missions to other parts of the Solar System over the past few decades that it is quite hard to summarise them. Several probes have visited asteroids and flown through the tails of comets. The Galileo probe sent back amazing images of Jupiter and its moons, before plunging into the giant planet's atmosphere and reaching a fiery end.
Many major discoveries and breakthroughs were made by astronomers in the 20th century - the expansion of the Universe, the existence of dark matter and dark energy, evidence of the Big Bang - but perhaps the most exciting was the discovery of the first planets around other stars. It is now known that planets around other stars are actually quite common, and it's just a matter of time before a 'twin Earth' is discovered. And who knows, maybe the discovery of extraterrestrial life will follow.