Smelly blast off
By Hannah Isom
An Iranian-born businesswoman has become the world's first female space tourist, blasting off on a mission due to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday.Ms Ansari, a 40 year old telecoms millionaire is thought to have paid around £10.6 million for the trip of a lifetime, which departed from Baikonur in Kazakhstan at around 1010 local time.
She will accompany two astronauts on "expedition 14" and once docked on the ISS, will help the crew carry out experiments on back pain for the European Space Agency. Nobody is quite sure whether backache is exacerbated by being thousands of miles from the Earth's atmosphere, but this important scientific research will no doubt solve the mystery once and for all.
Ms Ansari said she was ambassador for attracting private investment into space programmes and hopes the trip will help her put the planet into perspective.
"You'll see how small and fragile the Earth is compared to the rest of the Universe" she said, "it will give us a better sense of perspective". It could of course be argued that for a woman who spends ten million pounds on a holiday, a little perspective is long overdue.
As it turns out, Ms Ansari is lucky to be on the mission at all, as she only gained her place after a Japanese businessman, Daisuke Enomoto dropped out at the last minute due to "unspecified medical reasons".
It is not clear whether Mr Enomoto had 'got wind' of the breaking news earlier in the week that there was an unpleasant smell coming from the International Space Station. NASA reported the bad smell on Monday, which was initially blamed on the diet of freeze-dried eggs and beans.
It was later discovered to be potassium hydroxide vapour leaking from an oxygen vent. The situation has since been played down by NASA who claim that the incident was not life threatening.
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