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Soyuz blasts off with tourist

MOSCOW: Russian Soyuz spacecraft on Saturday lifted off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome to the International Space Station (ISS), with Gregory Oslen, the third space tourist together with the U.S. crew commander William McArthur and Russian Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev. The Soyuz TMA-7 separated from the Soyuz-FG booster and came into the planned orbit, a Mission Control Centre source told Itar-Tass. Mr. Oslen (59), a businessman and scientist, will spend a 10-day holiday on board the ISS, at a reported cost of $20 million. At present, Russia is ferrying people and supplies to the $100-billion ISS after NASA grounded its shuttle fleet in July 2003. Earlier, 60-year-old Dennis Tito from the U.S. and 27-year-old Mark Shuttleworth from South Africa travelled to the ISS as private tourists, in 2001 and 2002 respectively. — UNI

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