Tweet from Tim Peake after Royal Observatory Greenwich visit

Shortly before Tim Peake launched himself into space at the end of last year, our four-year-old caught the bug.

Not the hideous winter vomiting kind but the space one.

The one where overnight, as children become preoccupied with what lays past planet earth, parents are left exhausted attempting to answer endless questions about space, galaxies, the solar system and why anyone would ever be silly enough to suggest the moon is made of cheese. Or is the latter just us?

Then came the dramatic take-off for a former RAF pilot in a Russian Soyez rocket bound for the International Space Station, swiftly followed by the Cbeebies Stargazing series, during which I'm fairly confident that we perhaps watched more of Tim Peake than his own family.

The Planetarium and Astronomy Centre at Greenwich's Royal Observatory has been running regular events in conjunction with Major Peake's journey in an attempt to inspire another generation of space explorers, so we enrolled our space-mad son into a cadet workshop running one weekend.

Alongside the chance to use telescopes, study meterorites and learn about stargazers and the solar system, cadet camp taught him more about the ISS, Tim Peake's mission, the inner workings of a space craft and what exactly goes into making space food and why.

The Astronomy Centre is free to visit, as was the workshop he took part in and while planatarium shows require more formal booking and payment, a visit to this incredible collection of free galleries, real astronomers and space travel all inside the gorgeous Greenwich Park make for a perfect and economical afternoon out.

But it has done nothing to cure our budding astronaut of his space-obsession, more recently rocket fuelled with a space book, a hanging solar system above his bed, glow in the dark stars and a packet of freeze-dried astronaut's ice cream he is yet to eat having spent the last week overdosing on birthday treats.

Well that, and a very special birthday message from his absolute hero, who by all accounts does tweet his own messages inspired by, ironically, what's happening back down on planet earth.