Johannesburg | Saturday
ARTS, Culture, Science and Technology Minister Ben Ngubane on Friday commended and offered his support to the efforts of Mark Shuttleworth who is to take a journey to the International Space Station.
Ministerial representative Andrew Aphane said in a statement that Ngubane hoped that the experiments to be conducted during the space journey would ”discover new human knowledge that will assist government’s effort in addressing problems such as Aids”.
It is planned to crystallise HIV proteins in zero gravity in the hope that, when X-rayed, they will give an accurate view of the virus structure.
”The significance of Mark Shuttleworth’s journey is to bring science and technology in line with the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) programme for sustainable development for Africa,” Aphane said.
Shuttleworth (28) who will be the second tourist in space, will be one of three cosmonauts launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station (ISS), where he will spend eight days.
The launch is expected on April 25.
The date is however, dependant on numerous factors, including the orbit height of the ISS and the weather.
Other experiments Shuttleworth will conduct relate to cancer, medicine design and testing, environmental care and waste management.
Others will be on the effects of pollution, deforestation, climatology, and global warming. There will also be tests on the way genetics affect a human’s metabolism, while research will also be done on the development of technology in space.
Shuttleworth will cover the cost of the experiments on condition that all the results are released to the public.
Before being able to join his fellow crew members, Italian Roberto Vettori and Russian Yuri Gidzenko, Shuttleworth has had to undergo three months of intense training at Star City outside Moscow.
He has confirmed that he is paying $20-million (about R224-million) for the trip, the same sum American Dennis Tito paid Russian space agencies last year to become the world’s first space tourist.
Live coverage of the docking of the Soyuz spacecraft with the ISS and live interviews with the billionaire will be aired by Multichoice on channel 38 of DStv. – Sapa