American software developer Charles Simoni will fly on April 7 with the 15th crew and return on April 20 with the 14th crew. Normally a crew replacement mission takes only 11 days
The fifth space tourist Charles Simoni. PR photo - Space Adventures
Microsoft's software guru, Charles Simonyi, said that he is more afraid of appearing in public than of being launched into space on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Simoni, an American billionaire who helped develop Microsoft's Word and Excel applications, will take off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on April 7 together with two Russian cosmonauts.
Simoni The next space tourist who paid for his flight to the International Space Station will earn two extra days in space at no extra charge thanks to the antics of orbital mechanics. Instead of an 11-day journey to which he will take off in a Soyuz spacecraft together with two Russian cosmonauts, he will stay in space for 13 days. This is so that the members of the 14th crew can reach the desired landing track. Simoni will be the fifth space tourist to visit the space station since the 2001 flight of American businessman Dennis Tito. The others were the South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth in 2002, and the Americans Greg Olsen in 2005 and Anusha Ansari in 2006.
Simoni is training for a launch to the space station on April 7 together with crew 15 commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and flight engineer Oleg Kutov, who will take over command of the station from the current crew. Their spacecraft - Soyuz TMA-10 is scheduled to dock at the space station on April 9.
Normally the overlap between the two crews is nine days, NASA spokesman Rob Navias said at the Kennedy Space Center, adding days was intended to allow Simoni and the two members of the 14th crew to land in daylight at the landing site.
Simoni paid more than 20 million dollars for his flight in a deal between Russia's Federal Space Agency and Virginia-based Space Adventure. Space Adventure informed that Simoni will not be charged for the additional two days. Simoni will therefore set a record for the stay of a private space tourist in orbit. Yurchikhin and Kotov, meanwhile, will prepare for a six-month stay on the station and they will join a third crew member - NASA astronaut Sunita Williams who is already on the station.
Simoni, 58, born in Hungary and a longtime space enthusiast, is one of the founders of the software company International Software Corp., and used to be a programmer at Microsoft. He plans to participate in a series of biomedical experiments during his stay on the station and he also promises to update his journal from space at www.charlesinspace.com.
The Russian launch managers had to adjust the launch and landing time for the crew exchange due to a delay in the STS-117 mission. The flight was supposed to take place on March 15, during which the astronauts were supposed to install a new array of solar collectors on the station, but due to hail damage to the external fuel tank in the storm that occurred on February 26, NASA had to postpone the launch until mid-May at the latest.
In the two days that were added to the overlap between the teams, they will perform tasks of familiarization with the station and additional training, as well as some tasks involving the preparation for the arrival of the members of the Atlantis crew on mission STS-117.
The Soyuz numbered TMA-9 and carrying the astronauts Lopez-Alegria and the Russian cosmonaut Tyurin, as well as Simoni, will land near the city of Arklik in Kazakhstan on April 20 at 19:30 local time. The Russians prefer to land in daylight so that it is easy to locate the astronauts in the event of a rescue.
