World's first female space tourist blasts into orbit

RUSSIA: The world's first female space tourist launched her multi-million dollar adventure Monday, blasting off with two professional astronauts from the Baikonur cosmodrome bound for the International Space Station (ISS).

The Russian-made Soyuz rocket left the Russian base in Kazakhstan at 0408 GMT carrying a Soyuz TMA-9 capsule and its three passengers: Iranian-born US citizen and millionaire tourist Anousheh Ansari, NASA's Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin.

The capsule successfully separated minutes later and entered orbit, with docking at the ISS expected Wednesday.

Ansari, 40, will spend about eight days aboard the ISS before returning to Earth on September 28 with two of the station's current occupants, Russia's Pavel Vinogradov and American Jeffrey Williams. Ansari's family shed tears of joy as the Soyuz rocket, powered by 270 tonnes of low-temperature oxygen and kerosene fuel, shot above the Kazakh steppe.

Then came the champagne.

"Pure joy! I'm just so happy for her - beyond words," Ansari's sister Atousa Raissyan said. Ansari's mother, Fakhri Shahidi, watched the craft leap skyward in amazement. "It's hard to believe my daughter is going to space," she said.

"I pray with all my heart she's coming back soon." Ansari, who came to the United States with her parents from Iran when she was 16, made a fortune in the US telecoms market and had dreamt for years of going into orbit. She is believed to have paid some 25 million dollars (20 million euros) for the adventure, becoming the fourth such tourist.

"I feel relieved she's up there," her husband Hamid Ansari said after the blast-off. "The anticipation is over. It's the beginning of a new chapter in her life. I can't wait to see her come back."

Soyuz rockets became the main workhorses taking people to the ISS after the grounding of the US space shuttle fleet in 2003, an interruption that ended with the successful launch of the shuttle Atlantis last weekend.

Bai Konur, Monday,AFP