Sun, Sep 17, 2006
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.
More News
Pilot Applied Full Aft Stick And Nose-Up Trim, But The Airplane Remained On The Runway Analysis: The pilot reported that a preflight inspection and flight control checks revealed n>[...]
A Few Questions AND Answers To Help You Get MORE Out of ANN! 1) I forgot my password. How do I find it? 1) Easy... click here and give us your e-mail address--we'll send it to you >[...]
From 2022 (YouTube Edition): Before They’re All Gone... Humankind has been messing about in airplanes for almost 120-years. In that time, thousands of aircraft representing i>[...]
Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) A transportation system that transports people and property by air between two points in the NAS using aircraft with advanced technologies, including el>[...]
Aero Linx: MQ-1B Predator The MQ-1B Predator is an armed, multi-mission, medium-altitude, long-endurance remotely piloted aircraft that is employed primarily as an intelligence-col>[...]
NTSB Final Report: Douglas A-4K
See All