After a flawless liftoff on Sunday, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft sped
toward the international space station carrying three American and
Russian astronauts, including Austin space tourist Richard Garriott.
The spacecraft was on course to dock with the 220-mile-high orbital outpost on Tuesday, shortly before 4 a.m. CDT.
The Soyuz capsule carries NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, 41, who will
take command of the station through April, and Russian cosmonaut Yuri
Lonchakov, 43, who will serve alongside Fincke as the station's flight
engineer.
Garriott, the 47-year-old son of former NASA Skylab astronaut Owen
Garriott, paid the Russian space agency $30 million to become the
world's sixth space tourist since 2001.
"I am so thankful for this opportunity," Richard Garriott wrote on
the Web site of Space Adventures, the Virginia-based company that
brokered his 11-day mission.
The Soyuz rose from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 2:01
a.m. CDT. The launch was monitored in Houston by NASA's Mission Control
at the Johnson Space Center.
Though born in Cambridge, England, Richard Garriott grew up in
Nassau Bay, one of the Houston suburbs surrounding NASA's Johnson Space
Center, while his father trained for and flew a 60-day mission aboard
Skylab in 1973 and a 10-day space shuttle flight in 1983.
Unable to meet the medical requirements to become an astronaut, the
younger Garriott used his skills as a software programmer to develop
computer games, including the Ultima series. He found the new
field so lucrative that he dropped out of the University of Texas, but
he stayed in Austin, where he lives in a modern-day castle that
overlooks the city.
During his flight, Richard Garriott will participate in medical
experiments and educational activities, as well as monitor experiments
sponsored by drug companies.
The Austin entrepreneur is scheduled to return to Earth late on Oct.
23 with Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, the station's current
commander and flight engineer, aboard a second Soyuz parked at the
orbital outpost.
Fincke's crew will oversee the installation and activation of new
life-support equipment on the station. The gear, which is scheduled to
be delivered during a November space shuttle mission, will equip the
station to accommodate six full-time astronauts in May.
"This is a pretty pivotal mission for us," said Bill Gerstenmaier,
NASA's spaceflight chief. "These guys will be very, very busy."
Source : http://www.chron.com/
