First Female Space Tourist Heads to ISS
FYI,
"First Female Space Tourist Heads to ISS"
Associated Press
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060918/ap_on_sc/russia_space
: A Russian-built rocket carrying the world's first female space
: tourist lifted off Monday on a flight to the international space
: station.
: Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-American telecommunications
: entrepreneur, was accompanied by a U.S.-Russian crew on the Soyuz
: TMA-9 capsule.
: "I'm just so happy to be here," she said ebulliently as she
: entered the rocket Monday, watched by about a dozen relatives
: including her husband and mother.
: The Soyuz TMA-9 capsule took off less than a day after the U.S.
: space shuttle Atlantis pulled away from the orbiting station and
: began its journey Earthward.
: Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-
: Alegria were to join German astronaut Thomas Reiter on the station
: just over 48 hours after liftoff.
: Ansari, 40, was due to return to Earth on Sept. 29, along with
: cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and astronaut Jeffrey Williams, who
: have been on the station since April.
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"World's First Female Space Tourist, Teammates on Board Soyuz"
AFP
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060918/sc_afp/russiausiranspacetourism_060918042030
: The world's first female space tourist Anousheh Ansari and her
: teammates, Russia's Mikhail Tyurin and Michael Lopez-Alegria of
: the United States, have boarded the Soyuz spacecraft over two
: hours ahead of departure from the Baikonur cosmodrome in
: Kazakhstan.
: Ansari's mother Fakhri Shahidi, her husband Hamid Ansari, her aunt
: and sister were in the room as the American businesswoman and
: engineer who built her fortune in the US telecommunications market
: smiled, laughed, sent kisses and joked with Tyurin, who was
: sitting by her side.
: "I am very happy and excited for her. I am happy that finally she
: got to do what she wanted to do," her husband told AFP, adding his
: certainty that "Soyuz is proven, I have no worries."
: He also recalled that he told his wife the previous day that he
: realised "her ticket was one way, there was no return. She liked
: it. She said it was no problem."
: Asked when it was that Anousheh decided to go to space, he joked,
: "When she was born! Sometimes I wonder if she is going to visit
: her friends or relatives there."
: "I am torn between different feelings, I am very happy, but also
: worry a little, as a mother," Shahidi confessed in her turn.
--
Mark Reiff <markreiff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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