Space tourist lands safely
2006-09-29 10:21
Arkalyk, Kazakhstan - The space capsule carrying Anousheh Ansari, the world's first female paying space tourist, back to Earth touched down on Friday on the Kazakh steppe after a bone-jarring journey from the international space station.
Ansari, Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and US astronaut Jeffrey Williams had left the station aboard a cramped Russian Soyuz capsule a little over three hours earlier. After the capsule entered the Earth's atmosphere, search and rescue teams in three planes and 12 helicopters tracked the trajectory and scrambled to help the crew out of the craft.
Officials monitoring the landing from Russia's Mission Control outside Moscow applauded after confirming that the capsule had landed in the target zone around 90km north of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, at 05:14 Moscow time. The crew felt well, Mission Control said.
Video monitors at Mission Control showed Ansari smiling weakly as she sat in a chair surrounded by high grass after exiting the Soyuz. An unidentified official presented her with a large bouquet of red roses. Vinogradov and Williams sat in chairs nearby. Temperatures hovered around minus 3 Celsius (27 F).
Surprises
Ansari's husband Hamid surprised her, coming up from behind her chair and planting a kiss on her face. Rescuers then picked up all three chairs and carried them to waiting helicopters for the flight to Kustanai, Kazakhstan, where they were to board a plane for the trip to the Russian cosmonauts' training center at Star City outside Moscow.
They were accompanied by snails, worms and barley grown in experiments conducted aboard the orbiting station.
"Anousheh has done a good job - she's one of the team," ITAR-Tass quoted Vinogradov as saying.
The space travellers were to undergo a quick medical evaluation through monitors attached to their bodies as soon as they exited the capsule. The information, transmitted to a nearby medical tent, is then sent to the US space agency in Houston for analysis.
Ansari, an Iran-born American telecommunications entrepreneur, was a last-minute choice for the mission, which blasted off from the Russian manned space launch complex in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on September 18. Japanese businessman Daisuke Enomoto was scheduled to be on the launch, but he was scrubbed from the trip in late August for unspecified medical reasons.
The 40-year-old Ansari was the fourth person, and the first woman, to pay a reported $20m for a trip to the international space station. Briton Helen Sharman in 1991 took a trip to Russia's Mir station that she won through a contest.
Ansari's two companions on the trip to the station, Russian Mikhail Tyurin and American Michael Lopez-Alegria, were staying aboard the station for a six-month stint along with German Thomas Reiter of the European Space Agency, who arrived aboard the US space shuttle in July.
- SAPA