First Space Tourist Blasts Off as Scheduled

The world's first space tourist, US businessman Dennis Tito, blasted off for the International Space Station (ISS) as scheduled at 11:37 Moscow time (0737 GMT) Saturday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

A CNN live broadcast showed the Russian Soyuz TM-32 spacecraft, with Tito and two Russian cosmonauts -- mission commander Talgat Musabayev and flight engineer Yuri Baturin -- on board, was soaring up from the launching pad with a flaring tail and disappeared in the remote space several minutes later.

Tito, who is in a white space suit and sits between his two Russian partners, looks relaxed.

Russia's ground control announced the Soyuz TM-32 spacecraft separated from the Soyuz rocket and entered the calculated orbit at 11:46 Moscow time (0946 GMT).

According to the ground control, crew commander Musabayev said they are all right and every on-board system is working smoothly.

And the first word Tito said five minutes after the launch was the Russian version of "good."

The main task of the six-day expedition is to replace Soyuz TM- 31, now docking to the ISS as an escape craft, with the new Soyuz TM-32, as the service lifetime of the old one expires at the end of this month. The Soyuz vehicles perform the role of rescue ships, which the ISS crew could use to evacuate to the earth in case of emergency.

Soyuz TM-32 is planned to dock to the ISS at 13:30 Moscow time (0930 GMT) on April 30 and the crew will return to the earth in Soyuz TM-31 on May 5.

The Interfax news agency quoted Sergei Gorbunov, press secretary of the Russian Aerospace Agency chief, as saying the Soyuz can spend up to four days in autonomous flight depending on the time when the U.S. Endeavor space shuttle undocks from the ISS.

The U.S. space agency NASA on Thursday asked the Russian side to delay the flight due to a spate of troubles on the orbiter in recent days, including computer glitches and problems with docking devices holding the visiting U.S. Endeavor space shuttle.

NASA said earlier that it wanted to extend Endeavor's stay at the space station by two days until Monday, because the shuttle was acting as a back-up communications link.

But Russia insists on launching the Soyuz on time, accusing NASA of stalling because it objected in principle to the whole idea of a cash-paying amateur visit to the science outpost.

Tito, a 61-year-old Californian centimillionaire and former NASA engineer, is reportedly paying 20 million U.S. dollars for getting an extra seat on the Soyuz space craft for a six-day mission aboard the 95 billion dollar ISS, being built jointly by the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and some other countries.

The fare is a huge sum for Russia's cash-starved space program, amounting to more than a sixth of its annual budget and enough to cover the entire cost of Saturday's flight.

Always remembering his dream of reaching for the stars, Tito first approached Soviet officials a decade ago about a trip to the Mir space station, but met a host of hurdles, both technical and political.

NASA has said repeatedly that the partly-built ISS is no place for amateurs, complaining that Tito was not equipped to deal with many dangers of space travel and that his presence might be a distraction for the orbiter's crew.

But both Tito, who spent more than seven months in Russia training for the flight, and Russia's space agency, which stressed its status as a full partner in the ISS, are confident with the flight.






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