Russian Craft Carrying 5th Space Tourist Blasts off

 

A Russian Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft with space tourist Charles Simonyi of the U.S. and cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov of Russia blasts off from a launch pad at the Baikonur cosmodrome April 7, 2007. [Photo: Reuters]

A Russian Soyuz spaceship carrying the world's fifth space tourist and a two-man crew of the International Space Station (ISS) lifted off Saturday evening from its launch pad in the Kazakh steppe.

  

The rocket soared to the space through a hole of cloud and experienced smooth stages before it enter the orbit nine minutes later.

 

The three onboard passengers reported normal to the control center on land, waving hands and thumbing up, live image from the vessel showed.

  

Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov, the 15th crew for the ISS, with the U.S. tourist Charles Simonyi manned the vessel that set off at 9:31 p.m. Moscow time (1731 GMT) from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

  

Hours before their departure, Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov met with them, wished good luck and accompanied them to walk into the launching facilities.

  

The astronauts staying in the ISS watched the video of the launch as well.

  

The 58-year-aged Simonyi will stay in orbit for 12 days, and then return with the 14th ISS resident crew Mikhail Tyurin and Michael Lopez-Alegria. The trip reportedly cost the Hungary-born American 25 million U.S. dollars.

  

Sunita Williams, an astronaut from the United States, who has been working on the ISS since December 2006, will stay and assist her Russian colleagues.

 

Born in Budapest in 1948, Simonyi left his mother country Hungary at the age of 17. He moved to the United States in 1968 and later became the key software developer behind Microsoft Word and Excel.

  

He is now co-founder and CEO of Intentional Software Corp., based in Bellevue, Washington. In 2002, Forbes magazine ranked him the 445th richest person in the world with an estimated wealth of 824 million euros (about 989 million U.S. dollars). 

  

During the trip, Simonyi will carry out a series of experiments, such as measuring radiation levels and studying biological organisms inside the lab.

  

He will also have a feast with the ISS crew to celebrate Russia 's Cosmonauts' Day on April 12. Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space on that day in 1961.

 

The Soyuz will dock with the ISS at 11:12 p.m. Moscow time (1912 GMT) on April 9.