The Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft carrying Anousheh Ansari successfully docked with the ISS early Wednesday, and Ansari and her Soyuz crewmates boarded the station a few hours later. As an unbylined post on her space blog notes, she floated into the station weaning an X Prize cap (see this photo of the combined crews on the […]
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It’s been a quiet couple of days since Anousheh Ansari’s launch, since she’s had limited communications opportunities while the Soyuz spacecraft she’s flying in is in transit to the ISS. There are a couple items of note: One communications opportunity she did have was a rare three-way hookup between the ISS, Soyuz, and the shuttle […] Alan Boyle of MSNBC reports that the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) has awarded an experimental permit to Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ secretive suborbital launch venture. The one-year permit allows Blue Origin to begin powered test flights from its facility in West Texas, over 30 kilometers north of the town of Van Horn. […] NASA TV carried live the launch of the Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft carrying Anousheh Ansari along with the Expedition 14 crew of Michael Lopez-Alegria and Mikhail Tyurin, and everything looks to be well. The Soyuz lifted off on schedule at 12:09 am EDT (0409 GMT) from Baikonur. Most of the media’s coverage about Anousheh Ansari’s upcoming flight to the ISS has billed her as the first female space tourist. Or is she? In a NASA Watch entry (perhaps more accurately described as a rant against the “hyping” of her flight), Keith Cowing says no: “The U.K.’s Helen Sharman was the first female […] While Anousheh Ansari has been billed as the first female space tourist and the first Iranian-born person to fly in space, The Peninsula newspaper in Qatar profiles another prospective space traveler from that region of the world: Pakistani artist Namira Salim, who is one of Virgin Galactic’s founders. She is described in the article as […] Some various items about Anousheh Ansari and her upcoming flight: On his blog, MSNBC’s Alan Boyle touches upon the sensitive issue of religion and space, including the possibility that she will be able to observe the new moon from the ISS a day earlier than observers on the ground, triggering an early start to the […] An Interfax article today reports that Anousheh Ansari’s crewmates on the Soyuz launching late tonight, Michael Lopez-Alegria and Mikhail Tyurin, are impressed with her “professionalism”, as Tyurin put it, during her pre-flight training. “She has easily become part of the crew. One could think we’d been working for years together,” Tyurin added. An interesting comment […] The Las Cruces Sun-News reports that the city council will consider a proposal Monday to sell nearly 170 acres (68 hectares) of land near the city’s airport to the Rocket Racing League for $2.3 million. The RRL would also get right of first refusal on an additional 175 acres by the airport as well. The […] Something to tuck away in the back of your mind if you’re thinking of heading to Las Cruces in about a month for the X Prize Cup: Two anonymous letters, including one sent to the local newspaper, the Sun-News, threatened random shootings of residents unless city officials pay a ransom. Law enforcement officials are taking […] |
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