Learn Chinese: Chinese language - Female space tourist blasts off

WORLD / Europe

Female space tourist blasts off
(AP)
Updated: 2006-09-18 16:54

Baikonur, Kazakhstan - An Iranian-American telecommunications
entrepreneur took off Monday on a Russian rocket bound for the
international space station, achieving her dream of becoming the the
world's first paying female space tourist.

Anousheh Ansari was accompanied by a US-Russian crew on the Soyuz TMA-9
capsule, which entered orbit about 10 minutes after liftoff from the
Russian cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Ansari reportedly paid US$20 million 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 Monday, watched by about a dozen relatives.

As smoke billowed below the rocket, her relatives gasped and her mother
clasped her hands in front of her chest.

Ansari's husband, Hamid Ansari, watched the liftoff stoically, but her
sister's face was streaked with tears and her aunt jumped up and down,
shrieking and pumping her arms in the air.

At Russian Mission Control, NASA flight director Robert Dempsey said
Ansari's presence was a plus to the mission. As for the propriety of
sending tourists into space, he said: "My personal feeling is I wish it
could be me."

The Soyuz TMA-9 capsule took off less than a day after the US space
shuttle Atlantis pulled away from the orbiting station and began its
journey Earthward.

On board with Ansari were Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and US
astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who 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.

On Sunday, Ansari defended the role of "space flight participants" and
said she viewed herself as an ambassador for attracting private
investment to space flight.

"In order to make great leaps in space exploration ... private companies
and the government need to work together," she said at a news conference
at the cosmodrome in Baikonur.

Ansari gave US$10 million in 2002 for the naming rights to a prize
awarded to the first successful privately financed manned trip into space.

Ansari follows in the footsteps of Britain's Helen Sharman, who flew to
Russia's Mir Space Station in 1991 as a tourist as part of a lottery
system called Project Juno.

Astronaut Lopez-Alegria said just a few years ago he was skeptical of
private tourists. But he said now it was clear that the Russian space
program needed such investment �� and that without the Russian space
program, the US space program would suffer.

"If that's the correct solution... then not only is it good from the
standpoint of supporting the Russian space program, but it's good for us
as well," he said. Ansari's presence in space "is a great dream and a
great hope not just for our country but for countries all around the
world."

Cosmonaut Tyurin called Ansari "very professional" and said he felt like
they had worked together for a decade.

Ansari said she expected seeing Earth from space would alter her view of
the planet.

"You'll see how small and how fragile the Earth is compared to the rest
of the universe," she said. "It will give us a better sense of
responsibility."

Earlier she said she was eager to see Iran from space, she hasn't been
back since emigrating to the United States, and hopes to inspire girls in
her homeland to study science.

Ansari and her family left Iran a few years after the Islamic revolution,
in part because the opportunities for a young girl to study science were
becoming limited there.

Speaking no English when she arrived as a teenager with her family in
Virginia, she went on to earn bachelor's and master's degrees in
engineering within a few years.

She and her husband married in 1991 and later moved to Texas to start a
company that made signal-switching software for phone networks.

In 2000, at the height of the telecommunications boom, they sold their
suburban Dallas company to Massachusetts-based Sonus Networks Inc. for
US$550 million in Sonus stock.

The value of those shares slid from US$40 to under US$5 as the telecom
industry collapsed but her husband said they had "enough opportunity to
sell enough shares to earn financial independence."

The timing of some stock sales led to shareholder suits against Sonus and
nine people, including Anousheh Ansari. The plaintiffs accused her of
illegal insider trading in the sale of US$26.3 million in Sonus stock.

A spokeswoman for the couple said the Securities and Exchange Commission
never accused Mrs. Ansari of insider trading.

Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria are to join Reiter as the construction at the
space station is picking up pace. 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.

During the six-month tenure of Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria, four space walks
are planned, with as many as three to be conducted in January to help set
up the station's permanent cooling system. Another will take place
earlier to retrieve and install experiments on the station's exterior.

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Chinese language - Female space tourist blasts off

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