Command of
the International
Space Station (ISS) changed hands between two astronaut crews Wednesday
while Anousheh
Ansari, the outpost's paying visitor, made the most of her last full
day in space.
ISS Expedition
14 commander Michael
Lopez-Alegria took charge of the space station from his Expedition
13 counterpart during a bell-ringing ceremony that has become tradition
aboard the orbital laboratory.
"It's a
great honor to take command of the good ship Alpha," Lopez-Alegria said of the
ISS as he relieved Expedition 13 commander Pavel
Vinogradov.
Lopez-Alegria
and Expedition 14 flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin arrived
at the ISS aboard their Soyuz
TMA-9 spacecraft on Sept. 20 with Ansari - a U.S. entrepreneur and the world's
first female space tourist.
The Expedition
14 astronauts are relieving Vinogradov and Expedition 13 flight engineer Jeffrey
Williams, and join a third crewmember - European Space Agency astronaut Thomas
Reiter - already aboard the ISS. Vinogradov, Williams and Ansari are set
to cast off from the ISS on Thursday and land on the Central Asian steppes of
Kazakhstan at about 9:10 p.m. EDT (0110 Sept. 29 GMT).
"The bottom
line is yes, I am ready to return to Earth," Williams, who is completing a
six-month tour aboard the ISS, told the Houston Chronicle Tuesday.
During the
week-long ISS crew swap, Ansari has performed a series of biomedical experiments
for the ESA and enjoyed her trip in space, which was brokered with Russia's
Federal Space Agency by the Virginia-based firm Space Adventures.
"It's time
for me to go savor the last few days onboard," Ansari wrote in her blog today, where she detailed the
wonder of floating in weightlessness. "I truly enjoy weightlessness...you feel
like a free spirit."
In her blog, Ansari has documented her initial
difficulties to adapting to her new weightless environment, adding that her
headache, back pains and nausea were later solved by an injection of motion
sickness medication. She learned through trial and error how to navigate her
way through the ISS without causing much of a ruckus.
"I fly
around hitting walls and dislodging things. The first few days I would push
against a wall too hard and end up flying too fast to the other wall, not being
able to stop and BANG! I would hit the other wall and bounce back toward where
I started from," Ansari wrote. "Recently, however, I was complimented on how professionally
I fly! It was very flattering."
Lopez-Alegria
told CNN Espanol this week that more than 10 million people have visited
Ansari's website to follow her spaceflight.
"She is
having a lot of success with her mission," he said.
In addition
to accepting command of the ISS today, Lopez-Alegria presented Williams - a U.S.
Army colonel - with the Army Aviation Association of America's (Quad-A) Order
of St. Michael's Silver Award to recognize commitment to the nation's armed
forces.
"This isn't
just a change of command for the crew, but also for the ground teams,"
Lopez-Alegria said, adding that new flight directors and other controllers are
taking their positions for Expedition 14. "They join the three of us in taking the
good ship Alpha into uncharted territory as we complete the International Space
Station."
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