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Kazakhstan, September 29, 2006 – The world’s first female space tourist returned to Earth and said she’ll always remember her trip to the International Space Station and seeing Earth from above. But the thing she will cherish the most are the friendships she made in space.
Anousheh Ansari, who also became the first female Muslim and Iranian-born person to enter space, Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and U.S. astronaut Jeffrey Williams left the ISS aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule, and three hours later, at 9:13 p.m. EDT Thursday or 5:14 a.m. Friday Russian time, landed in Kazakhstan where an official presented Ansari with a bouquet of red roses.
"Anousheh has done a good job — she's one of the team," ITAR-Tass quoted Vinogradov as saying.
Ansari’s trip was watched throughout the world as people read from her space blog detailing her adventures with experiences like weightlessness. “You can lift a 500 lb block with one hand and move it around with one finger… You can fly and float around instead of walking… you can do somersaults at any age… and you can play with your food.”
She wrote about the view. “As you may know, the station makes a complete orbit every 90 minutes, so when I talk about night don’t think of it as night on Earth when it is dark outside. The sun rises and sets during each orbit and you can watch 32 beautiful sunrises and sunsets over the course of the day.”
And she wrote about the messages people wrote her. “Every time I read a message saying how someone has been energized and motivated to pursue their dreams, I get goose bumps. I get all teary-eyed when I read how a young girl in Mashhad is watching me and is motivated to one day become an astronaut.”
On her last day in the station, her writings were sentimental — about the crew and the bond they shared, about the trip coming to an end and about the possibilities that will come next.
“They have made this trip so incredibly special for me that I’m sure I will never forget them…” she wrote.
About her trip coming to an end: “I keep going to different corners of the station and try to hold on tight, in my memory, to what I’m seeing and feeling. Several times I just let myself float freely and tumble around like a feather caught in a breeze to see where I would end up.”
While her trip came to an end, her dreams just started, she said. “Maybe I was supposed to be the alarm clock that awakens that little voice inside of each and every one of you so you can all start changing our world to a better place to live for all of us… Maybe I was meant to inspire that young scientist who will become the one who comes up with the ‘warp engine.’ Maybe I was supposed to remind all of us of our infinite possibilities…”
Ansari, chairman and co-founder of Prodea Systems, Inc., a digital home technology company, paid a reported $20 million for the trip. The trip was brokered through Space Adventures, which also offers sub-orbital flights.
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The departing members of Expedition 13 including Spaceflight Participant Anousheh Ansari are in the Zvezda service module. From left are, Ansari, Commander Pavel Vinogradov and Flight Engineer Jeff Williams. Credit: NASA
From left are, Space flight participant Anousheh Ansari and the Expedition 13 crewmembers, Commander Pavel Vinogradov and Flight Engineer Jeff Williams. Moments earlier they had been extracted from their Soyuz capsule after returning to Earth.
Russian and American search recovery teams surround Anousheh Ansari, space flight participant, after spending 11 days in space and 9 days on the ISS under a commercial agreement with the Russian Federal Space Agency.
Just after landing in the Soyuz TMA-8 spacecraft following undocking earlier in the day from the ISS.
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