Simonyi updates

A few minor updates about Charles Simonyi’s upcoming trip to the ISS:

• Simonyi will perform a series of tests for the Japanese space agency JAXA during his stay on the station. He will test several high-definition camcorders currently on the station to see how radiation exposure has degraded the performance of their CCD sensors.
• Simonyi will carry on his flight an unusual memento: a paper tape from an old Soviet-era computer, the Ural-2. Simonyi first learned computer programming on a Ural-2 while a student in Hungary.
• Reuters describes a day in the life of Simonyi during training, noting that he wakes up each morning before dawn “ready to build a tent in sub-zero temperatures, hover weightless in a plane or, worse, conjugate Russian verbs.”
• The Dallas Morning News reports that Anousheh Ansari, who flew to the ISS last fall, will be on the Martha Stewart Show on Friday. Stewart, of course, is usually described as the “special friend” of Simonyi, so the timing of Ansari’s appearance, just over a week before Simonyi’s launch, is no coincidence.