New crew, tourist off to ISS
2006-09-18 08:10
Baikonur, Kazakhstan - A Russian-built rocket carrying a new US-Russian crew and the world's first female space tourist lifted off on Monday and streaked into the cloudless sky over the desolate steppes of Kazakhstan, headed to the International Space Station.
The Soyuz TMA-9 capsule headed into space less than a day after the space shuttle Atlantis pulled away from the station and began its journey back to Earth.
It entered orbit about 10 minutes after lift-off, according to Russian space officials monitoring the launch at Mission Control in Korolyov, outside Moscow.
Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and US astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria were to join German astronaut Thomas Reiter on the station just over 48 hours after blasting off from Baikonur.
Travelling with the new crew was Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-American telecommunications entrepreneur who has paid a reported $20m to become the fourth private astronaut to take a trip on a Russian spacecraft and visit the station.
"I'm just so happy to be here," she said ebulliently as she entered the rocket on Monday, watched by about a dozen relatives, including her husband and mother, as well as the other crew members' families, space officials and reporters.
Ansari, 40, was due to return to Earth on September 29, along with cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and astronaut Jeffrey Williams, who have been on the station since April.
Unprecedented phase of activity
Speaking at a final news conference on Sunday at the Russian cosmodrome in Baikonur, Ansari, 40, defended the role of "space flight participants" and said she viewed herself as an ambassador for attracting private investment to space flight.
Ansari gave $10m in 2002 for the naming rights to a prize awarded to the first successful privately financed manned trip into space.
She said that the Soyuz-TMA capsule carrying her, Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria to the station was not unlike the first-generation Russian space capsules from decades ago.
"In order to make great leaps in space exploration ... private companies and the government need to work together," she told reporters.
Astronaut Lopez-Alegria pointed out that space flight was not for the lighthearted, and said that just a few years ago he was sceptical of private tourists. But he said now it was clear that the Russian space programme needed such investment - and that without the Russian space programme, the US space programme would suffer.
Cosmonaut Tyurin called Ansari "very professional" and said he felt like they had worked together for a decade already.
Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria are to join Reiter as the construction - and traffic - at the space station enters an almost unprecedented phase of activity.
On the agenda for the four days following the departure of the Atlantis: The station's current crew will shift a Progress supply ship to a different docking port to make way for the Soyuz; Atlantis will land back on Earth; and the Soyuz will dock at the station.
- AP