First space tourist blasts off

First space tourist blasts off

Kazakhstan, April 28, A Russian rocket lifted off flawlessly on Saturday from the Baikonur cosmodrome, carrying the first space tourist, American Dennis Tito, and two cosmonauts into orbit on their way to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz rocket blasted off from the barren steppes of Central Asia under sunny, blue skies, and disappeared into the heavens, trailing a red flame and leaving a faint line of white smoke.

The spaceship carrying Tito, a 60-year-old California businessman, was scheduled to dock with the ISS on Monday. A television monitor inside the spaceship showed Tito, in a white spacesuit decorated with an American flag on the shoulder and a plexiglass helmet, grinning broadly. A ground controller asked in Russian-accented English, "How do you feel, Dennis?" "Khorosho," he replied in Russian - "Great."

Tito's 26-year-old son Mike also watched the launch, awe-struck. Until the eve of the launch, US and Russian officials had argued behind the scenes about the overlap of the Soyuz rocket launch and the continued docking of US space shuttle Endeavour at the space station. "We are glad to have lived to see this exciting moment," Russian Aerospace Agency chief Yuri Koptev told the crew just before they entered the spaceship early on Saturday.

"The stars have been favourable to us," he said. Computer problems have kept the Endeavour at the station longer than expected as astronauts try to carry out operations of a critical robot arm. NASA said that docking the Russian spacecraft next to the US shuttle could be extremely delicate and potentially dangerous. Russian space officials refused to delay Saturday's launch but agreed to put the Soyuz in a holding pattern if the shuttle was still at the space station on Monday. NASA said the shuttle could leave on Sunday, but only if the computer trouble was resolved quickly. NASA representative Michael Baker, who watched the blastoff at Baikonur, said the Soyuz TM-32 spaceship might dock on Tuesday rather than Monday."

The eleventh-hour dispute over the timing of the blastoff followed a long wrangle over whether a tourist should go to the space station at all.

(Fig: Space American space tourist Tito (right) with Cosmonaut Musabaev at Baikanour cosmodrome, Kazakhstan wave as they board the Soyuz rocket for a journey to the International Space Station on Saturday.)