Several
Russian media reports, including some citing a high-ranking official in the
country's Federal Space Agency, have stated that an agreement is in hand with U.S. entrepreneur and X Prize sponsor Anousheh Ansari for
a future trip to the International Space Station (ISS).
"We have
signed a pre-contract agreement with Ansari," said Alexei Krasnov, head of the Russia's manned spaceflight projects,
reportedly told the Russian online publication Kommersant last week. "She
is considered an alternate for the Japanese cosmonaut."
Similar
reports have also appeared in other Russian news wires.
Japanese
businessman Daisuke
Enomoto is next in line to ride a Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS as a private
paying customer under a reported $20 million deal brokered by the Virginia, U.S.-based tourism firm Space
Adventures. The Russian aerospace firm RSC Energia has posted several images of
Enomoto and Ansari donning
Sokol spacesuits and inspecting
a Soyuz spacecraft, though in March Space Adventures - currently the only
firm that arranges private orbital trips -said Ansari had not yet
signed a formal contract with the firm.
RSC Energia
officials said it was the first time Enomoto and Ansari were "acquainted with [an] operational Soyuz space vehicle."
"There
are a lot of people in the queue," Space Adventures chief Eric Anderson
told MSNBC.com's Alan Boyle last week. "I wouldn't want to spend my
time as a backup if I couldn't fly eventually."
Born in Iran and now a U.S.
citizen and successful entrepreneur, Ansari founded the telecommunications firm
Telecom Technologies with her husband Hamid and brother-in-law Amir. The family
also provided
seed money for the Ansari X
Prize spaceflight competition - later renamed for the entrepreneurs - which
offered $10 million to the first team to build and launch a privately-funded,
piloted spacecraft to suborbital space and back twice in two weeks.
More
recently, the Ansaris have launched their Texas-based Prodea firm and agreed to
partner
with Space Adventures to develop the tourism firm's Explorer spacecraft for
suborbital flights from Singapore
and the United
Arab Emirates.
Space
Adventures has brokered a series of ISS flights for high-paying entrepreneurs,
beginning in 2001 with the launch of U.S.
businessman Dennis Tito. South
African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth
followed in 2002, with U.S. scientist and businessman Gregory
Olsen launching in October 2005. Each of those flights, like Enomoto's,
carried a reported cost of about $20 million.
Enomoto, a
34-year-old entrepreneur, is currently training
to launch toward the ISS in September with Expedition
14 crewmembers Michael Lopez-Alegria and Mikhail Tyurin. The expedition's
third astronaut, flight engineer Sunita Williams, will arrive at the ISS aboard
a later NASA shuttle flight.
Like his
predecessors, Enomoto will spend about one week aboard the ISS before returning
to Earth. Space Adventures officials have also said that Charles
Simonyi, a former Microsoft software developer, is also on tap for a future
ISS flight.
The Kommersant
cited Krasnov as stating that Ansari could fly to the space station in spring
2007, though Simonyi is also a candidate for that flight.
Aside from
its orbital spaceflight services, Space Adventures also arranges trips aboard
Russian-built MiG jets, rides aboard an aircraft that simulates weightlessness
through a parabolic trajectory, and has announced plans to pursue $100 million
trips around the Moon.
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