KOROLYOV, Russia -- US space tourist Charles Simonyi arrived at the International Space Station yesterday with a hamper of gourmet food to spice up his fellow cosmonauts' space-food diet.
The capsule carrying Simonyi -- who paid $25 million for his trip into orbit -- and two Russian cosmonauts docked with the station two days after they lifted off from a Russian launch pad in the Central Asian steppe.
Applause rang out at the Russian mission control center outside of Moscow as live monitors showed the capsule with the three astronauts on board maneuvering into position and then locking on to one of the space station's ports.
"We are very happy to have reached the . . . moment of docking," said Alexei Krasnov, head of piloted flight with Russia's space agency Roskosmos.
He said of Simonyi, the world's fifth space tourist who became a multimillionaire by helping develop the Microsoft Word software: "It is very nice to see a person who has fulfilled his longstanding dream."
After safety checks, the hatches opened and the three crew members -- Simonyi and cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov -- floated through the airlock connecting their capsule to the space station.
Once inside, they shook hands and embraced with the station's residents for the past six months -- NASA astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria and Sunita Williams and Russian Mikhail Tyurkin.
Simonyi was born in Hungary and emigrated to the United States where he joined Microsoft when it was a start-up company. He helped develop some of the company's flagship programs including Word and Excel and now runs his own company.
The gourmet food parcel was put together by Simonyi's friend lifestyle guru Martha Stewart, who saw him off from the launch pad in former Soviet Kazakhstan.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2007/04/10/outer_space_tourist_simonyi_reaches_his_dream_destination/
No comments:
Post a Comment