Set To Launch With Ansari On Monday

A Soyuz rocket sits atop its launcher on a barren steppe at the southern end of the Ural Mountains today awaiting a Monday launch. Russian engineers moved the 30-ton rocket nearly five miles from its preparation and assembly hangar to the pad on Saturday.

Participating in this launch will be Anousheh Ansari of Ansari X-Prize fame. Ansari is paying an estimated $20 million for the privelege of joining cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria on Monday's launch.

On a blog site Ansari will use to document her adventure she wrote, "How do you put a price on your Dream? Is it worth one month's salary? ... Is it worth dying for? ... For me, I was ready, and still am, to give my life for my dream."

Russia's space program has been a "commercial" enterprise for some time now -- Ansari is the fourth "space tourist" to ride aloft on a Russian spacecraft. In fact, the Soyuz rocket she will ride into space Monday is plastered with several commercial advertisements.

The Soyuz will dock with the International Space Station (ISS) where Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria will join European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Reiter, who flew on the shuttle Discovery in July, to continue planned construction projects. The renewed construction efforts are now possible following activation of the station's new solar array installed by shuttle Atlantis' crew this past week.

Ansari's visit to the ISS won't be all oohs and ahs, though. ESA has assigned her several experiments involving study of human physiology. Considering her participation in furthering human understanding of space flight, Ansari would rather be called a "space flight participant."

If all goes as planned, Ansari will spend eight days on the ISS, returning on September 28th with astronaut Jeffrey Williams and cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov.

FMI: http://anoushehansari.com/, www.roscosmos.ru