Britain may be scorned by other nations for steadfastly refusing to send humans into space, but from next week it will have its own university course on how to be an astronaut.

Staff at the University of Leicester have called in former Nasa astronaut Jeff Hoffman – a veteran of five space shuttle missions – to teach the course, which will offer instruction on how to survive in space, coping with the psychological demands of long-term space travel and how to conduct a spacewalk without dropping your toolbag.

Hoffman, who took part in crucial spacewalks to fix cameras aboard the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993, will join Leicester as a visiting professor but will maintain his position in the astronautics department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The UK government is reviewing its long-held opposition to human spaceflight and is due to announce its conclusions by the end of the year. The announcement is expected weeks before the European Space Agency reveals at least four new recruits to its astronaut corps.

A British astronaut has never trained through Esa because the UK's funding of space only runs to robotic missions and ground-based astronomy.

"There's a strong student interest in this despite the fact that the British government has not supported human participation in spaceflight," Hoffman told the Guardian. "If Britain continues with that policy, these students will still be able to work in other capacities at the European Space Agency."

Hoffman will draw particular attention to the future exploration of the solar system, which is likely to see humans working alongside robotic rovers, which could be sent out from a manned moonbase to conduct experiments at remote sites.

The Leicester course begins as the UK prepares for a high-level meeting of European science ministers at which human space exploration will be discussed.

Martin Barstow, head of physics and astronomy at Leicester, said: "I'm fed up with the way the UK keeps dodging the issue of being involved in human spaceflight. Our students don't need to be loaded with that baggage. They still have aspirations to be astronauts and they still want to get involved in the space industry, so why should the UK government's attitude be a handicap?

"Only a very few people are ever going to become astronauts, even if the UK was fully signed up to human space flight. Most people won't get to do it, but they will become highly qualified physicists and engineers and will get involved in the space industry in different roles. What we want them to come out with is a real grasp of practicalities of living and working in space and what we need to do in the future."