World's first female space tourist arrives at space station

A Russian Soyuz spaceship delivered the world's first female space tourist and a two-man crew to the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday, the Mission Control near Moscow said.

The Soyuz TMA-9 capsule carrying Iran-born American Anousheh Ansari, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria docked with the ISS at 9:21 a.m. Moscow time (0521 GMT), according to the Mission Control.

The astronauts then spent nearly three hours opening the hatches between the Soyuz and the ISS.

Ansari was the first to float into the orbiting outpost, where she and the new Russian-U.S. crew were greeted by Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov, U.S. astronaut Jeffrey Williams and German astronaut Thomas Reiter.

Ansari, 40, who runs a telecommunications company in Texas, will conduct a series of blood and muscular experiments for the European Space Agency during her eight-day stay on the station. Previous space tourists reportedly paid about 20 million U.S. dollars apiece for a ride aboard the Soyuz.

Ansari will return to Earth on Sept. 29 with Vinogradov and Williams, who have been working on the space station since April.

The Soyuz blasted off on Monday from the barren steppes of Kazakhstan.

Source: Xinhua