MOSCOW - Russians celebrated the Day of Space Exploration,
or Cosmonautics Day, on Thursday with cosmonauts aboard the International Space
Station (ISS) treating themselves to a French cuisine dinner and unnamed
governors considering whether to buy a $25 million ticket to this scientific
outpost more than 186 miles (300 kilometers)
above the Earth.
Thursday is a working day for the station's U.S.-Russian
crew, including newly arrived American space tourist Charles
Simonyi and cosmonauts Fyodor
Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov. But after their working shift ends, the crew,
which includes U.S. astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria
and Sunita "Suni" Williams
as well as Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, will
sample French cuisine meals brought by Simonyi, the fifth space tourist, to the
station earlier this week, ITAR-TASS reported.
"April 12
is a big celebration both in Russia for Cosmonautics Day celebrating the
anniversary of the launch of Yuri Gagarin as first man in space and also for us
the launch of the first space shuttle in 1981," Lopez-Alegria
told CNN late Wednesday. "So we're going to combine everything into kind
of a little fiesta up here and we're going to have that special meal for that
occasion."
NASA
officials said the catered gourmet dinner is set for the end of the space
station crew's day, or about 4:30 a.m. EDT (0830 GMT) Friday.
Ahead of the dinner the crew had a linkup with the Mission
Control Center in Korolev to talk to First Deputy
Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov. Ivanov
used the opportunity to promise that Russia would "beef up" its
segment of the station, which is a joint project of more than
a dozen of nations. He also inquired how the crew was feeling to hear Simonyi
respond in Russian that he is "feeling
pleasant."
Simonyi is to return to Earth along with on with Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin on board of a
Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft on April 20. He is documenting his spaceflight at his
web site: www.charlesinspace.com.
Yurchikhin and Kotov are scheduled for a six-month mission
aboard the ISS while Williams is to remain at the station until summer, when
NASA's space shuttle Endeavour will arrive, according to NASA's web site.
During the video-link Ivanov jokingly told the
Yurchikhin and Kotov "to cherish Suni"
Williams.
"Thank you, it is very important to us to be celebrating Cosmonautics Day here," Yurchikhin told Russian space officials and veteran cosmonauts, who told the crew that flying in space on April 12 is good luck.
The Virginia-based firm Space Adventures said Wednesday that
it has secured ISS-bound seats for private spaceflyers
in 2008 and 2009, though some Russian news reports have set the next space
tourist flight for 2009. Director of Russia's Federal Space Agency Anatoly Perminov told Interfax on
Wednesday that several governors have displayed interest in going for a flight
to ISS, which typically lasts 10 days and costs somewhere between $20 million
and $25 million. "I am not going to name names for now, let's see how it
goes," the space chief said.
It would take Russian governors' decades, if not centuries
to accumulate $25 million dollars if they set aside money only from their
official wages and it remains unclear how any of them could buy a $20 million
ticket to space without raising questions on how they can afford such a trip.
Several governors have been investigated for corruption recently, including
probes into financing of their trips to different locations.
While touting possibility of publicly servants becoming
space tourists in a country where average monthly wage doesn't exceed $500 Perminov also lamented the fact that none of Russia's rich
men, including 53 individuals on the 2007 Forbes list of billionaires, have so
far expressed interest. "Perhaps, they are afraid of leaving their
fortunes unattended," the space chief said.
Eric Anderson, president and chief executive of U.S.-based
Space Adventures, told Interfax on Thursday
that he hopes a Russian space tourist will fly to ISS eventually. Anderson,
whose company markets rides on Russian-made Soyuz TMA craft to ISS among other
things, said the name of the sixth space tourist would be revealed in the next
few months.
Down, on the Earth, flowers were laid across Russia at
monuments dedicated to the flight of Yuri Gagarin to space 46 years ago.
Top dogs used the occasion to visit space facilities and space-related
locations. State Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov went to Kaluga, the home
town of Russian rocket science father Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, while First Deputy Ivanov
went to the Mission Control Center and then to Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training
Center in the Star City, Moscow region.
SPACE.com Staff Writer Tariq Malik contributed to this report
from New York City.
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