Free Republic

ANOUSHEH ANSARI, the world’s first female paying space tourist, returned to Earth today after an 11 days in space capped by the bone-jarring journey home from the international space station. Ansari, Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and US astronaut Jeffrey Williams had left the station aboard a cramped Russian Soyuz capsule a little over three hours before landing as dawn broke over the steppes of Kazakhstan. After the capsule entered the Earth’s atmosphere, search and rescue teams in three planes and 12 helicopters tracked the trajectory and scrambled to help pull the crew out of the craft, which landed on its...

AS A young girl in Iran, Anousheh Ansari would stare in wonder at the stars and dream of joining them in the blackness of space.Yesterday, a week after her 40th birthday, she made her dream come true. At an estimated cost of $20 million (£11 million), Mrs Ansari became the first woman space tourist after blasting off in a Russian Soyuz rocket from Star City in Kazakhstan. As the first Iranian-born astronaut was circling Earth last night, her remarkable journey from Tehran to the International Space Station was being hailed also as evidence of the continued power of another dream:...