An American
billionaire and five professional astronauts were all smiles Tuesday as they
kicked off a nearly two-week changing of the guard activity aboard the
International Space Station (ISS).
U.S.
entrepreneur Charles
Simonyi - the world's fifth space tourist to the ISS - and the station's Expedition
14 and Expedition 15 astronaut crews are spending the first full day of a 11-day
crew change operation performing maintenance and hand-over tasks.
Simonyi arrived
at the space station on Monday with Expedition 15 commander Fyodor
Yurchikhin and flight engineer Oleg Kotov, capping a two-day trek that began
with the April
7 launch of their Russia-built Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft from Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
"The lab
looks great," Yurchikhin, who last visited the space station during NASA's
STS-112 shuttle flight in October 2002. "Everything, every equipment, I think
is still in the same place...I am at my home."
Yurchikhin
and Kotov are taking control of the ISS from Expedition 14 commander
Michael Lopez-Alegria and flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin, who have lived aboard
the orbital laboratory since September 2006 and are nearing the end of their
seven-month mission. The two cosmonauts will also welcome NASA astronaut Sunita
Williams, an Expedition 14 flight engineer, into their crew ranks for the first
stage of their orbital mission.
Lopez-Alegria
will set a U.S. record for the longest uninterrupted spaceflight when he and
Tyurin return to Earth aboard their Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft on April 20, along
with Simonyi, after 214 days in orbit. Their initial six-month mission was extended to
one month after a launch date shift for their ISS replacements.
"I was
really very happy to stay up here and I kind of really didn't want to go home
until just recently," Lopez-Alegria said in the crew conference. "I think seven
months is just fine."
Cozy
space tourist
For
Simonyi, who is paying between $20 million and $25 million for a 13-day
spaceflight to the ISS, reaching the orbital laboratory has meant coming to
grips with the absence of Earth's ever-present gravitation pull.
"My
experience is very positive. I think that weightlessness is fine," Simonyi said
from the station's U.S. Destiny laboratory. "It requires adaptation, and the
training I got at Star City and Baikonur really helped me."
Simonyi,
58, has carried a lifelong interest in spaceflight from his days representing
his native Hungary as a Junior Astronaut at age 13 to his work as a former
Microsoft software developer and accomplished pilot. He is documenting his
spaceflight via images, videos and a blog on his Web site www.charlesinspace.com, which
received 10 million hits on launch day according to spokesperson Susan
Hutchinson, who spoke with Simonyi Tuesday during a ground-to-space call.
Hutchinson
said more than 950 questions have been submitted to Simonyi's Web site since
his launch, one of which asked what the space tourist's greatest surprise and
joy has been in his first few days in space.
"I think
the greatest joy was arriving at the space station and seen the space station
structure for the first time from the inside, " Simonyi said. "It's an
unforgettable experience."
Simonyi
liked the view of the ISS from inside the Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft during
docking to that of a stage set for an opera, with the twilight casting an odd
purple light on the station before the Sun came over the Earth's horizons. But
inside, the atmosphere was markedly different, he added.
"Inside,
it's a very cozy place," Simonyi said of the space station. "I can see how
Fyodor feels like it's home."
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