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Woman space tourist set for liftoff

BAIKONUR (Kazakhstan): Great leaps in space exploration can only come through private investment and Government involvement, the woman slated to be the first female space tourist said on Sunday, as Russian engineers made final preparations for the latest launch to the International Space Station.

Iranian-American telecommunications entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari and the incoming station crew underwent last-minute checks as technicians tested electronic systems and prepared to fuel the Russian-built Soyuz rocket, perched on a Baikonur cosmodrome launch pad in the barren Kazakh steppe.

Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria will join German astronaut Thomas Reiter on the orbiting station roughly two days after liftoff.

Ms. Ansari has paid a reported $20 million to become the fourth private astronaut to take a trip on a Russian spacecraft and visit the space station. Ms. Ansari said she hoped her being on the station and seeing Earth from space would change her point of view of the planet. — AP

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