He took the audience through the eight year preparation for the trip which featured:

• A test for claustrophobia that consisted of being zipped into a large 'beach ball' while wearing heart rate monitors.
• Living on the ocean floor in an undersea base, with other potential crew members.
• A team building two week trek into the desert.
• A zero gravity flight which astronauts call the "vomit comet", in which an aeroplane flies in such a way that people inside are temporarily weightless.
• Continual intensive technical training throughout the eight year period.

Nicholas returned to the Department the medal, which he took into space strapped to his flight check list. The medal designed and made by Ali Khan and Alastair Ross, was specially etched in the Department on surgical grade stainless steel using high power laser. Nicholas signed the medal and also gave the Department a commemorative plaque with pictures of the mission and a Union Jack flag that went into space. These were presented to Keith Glover, Head of Department, and will be displayed in the entrance area within a few weeks.

Nicholas spoke about the future of space travel explaining how America will send a new generation of explorers to the moon aboard NASA’s Orion crew exploration vehicle. Making its first flights early in the next decade, Orion is part of the Constellation Program to send human explorers back to the moon, and then onward to Mars and other destinations in the solar system.