FORMER Cranbrook schoolboy Piers Sellers is set to launch into space in August - and he's planning to take a bit of his old school with him.

Mr Sellers, who left Cranbrook School in 1973 and went on to take a degree at Edinburgh University and a doctorate at Leeds, will be on board the Space Shuttle Atlantis taking vital equipment to the International Space Station.

Mr Sellers, who joined the NASA astronaut programme in 1996, will be the Mission Specialist on the STS112 mission to deliver a CETA cart (Crew and Equipment Translation Aid) to the station. The cart will aid future astronauts in moving themselves and equipment around the station.

During the 10-day mission, Mr Sellers and his five fellow astronauts will also fix a new equipment truss to the outside of the space station, which is under continual expansion.

Mr Sellers, 47, who now lives permanently in America with his wife and two children, is allowed to take a dozen personal items with him into space, which on his return will be authenticated by NASA.

He wrote to Cranbrook School asking whether there was anything it wanted to send with him to the stars.

The governors immediately thought of the school's foundation charter, signed by Elizabeth 1, but the document kept in a glass case in the school library was too fragile to risk. Instead, they have had a copy made, which Mr Sellers will take with him. On his return, it will be kept alongside the Tudor original.

The school is also invited to send a representative to the launch of the Space Shuttle at Cape Canaveral, which is scheduled for August 22, weather permitting.