Space tourist, Russia-U.S. crew return to Earth
(AP)
Updated: 2006-09-29 10:50
NEAR ARKALYK, Kazakhstan - A Russian Soyuz capsule with Iranian-born space
tourist Anousheh Ansari on board bumped down safely in the Kazakh steppe at dawn
on Friday.
Space tourist Anousheh Ansari and her
husband Hamid meet near the Souyz capsule after landing in northern
Kazakhstan September 29, 2006. A Russian Soyuz capsule with Iranian-born
space tourist Ansari on board bumped down safely in the Kazakh steppe at
dawn on Friday. [Reuters] |
"They've completed the landing," a mission control official in Moscow said
after the small Soyuz TMA-8 capsule, charred black from re-entry into the
atmosphere, landed in northern Kazakhstan.
The capsule, returning from the International Space Station, was also
carrying Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and U.S. astronaut Jeff Williams.
The craft slowed its descent with parachutes and fired rockets to make a soft
landing on its side in a field about 80 km (50 miles) north of the town of
Arkalyk.
A Russian space programme recovery team surrounded the capsule to open the
hatch and extract the cosmonauts.
Ansari, a 40-year-old U.S. telecoms entrepreneur who left Iran in 1984, was
the first female tourist, first female Muslim and first Iranian to go to space.
There have been three other space tourists, each paying the Russian space
programme about $20 million for the trip.
Ansari blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on September 18
along with a fresh U.S-Russian crew that relieved Vinogradov and Williams on the
space station.
"This 10 days has been magnificent for me," she said during a farewell
ceremony aboard the station, about three-and-a-half hours before the landing at
0114 GMT. "I hope to be able to have this experience once again in the near
future."
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