SOUTH African space tourist Mark Shuttleworth on Sunday completed his first 24 hours on the International Space Station (ISS) after admitting ”moments of terror, moments of exhilaration” on the first leg of his cosmic adventure.
Shuttleworth complained of gravity-loss related backache but said being at the ISS meant getting to see 15 extra sunsets a day.
”We have 16 orbits around the world … so 16 sunrises, 16 sunsets. I look down past my feet, we have passed Japan and we are headed across the Pacific,” he said in an interview with a South African radio show.
”It is Sunday morning here too, we stick to Greenwich Mean Time,” the 28-year-old added, when asked what day it was in outer space.
Shuttleworth on Thursday became the world’s second space tourist after blasting off from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in a Soyuz rocket with Russian flight commander Yury Gidzenko and Italian engineer Roberto Vittori.
”You can’t help but feel a number of things, first the sheer beauty of the world and secondly that it is such a small and precious thing that protects us and should keep us all together,” he enthused.
The Internet millionaire paid $20-million for the 10-day trip during which he will carry out science experiments at the ISS, including one on Aids, which afflicts 4,7-million South Africans.
Shuttleworth is the world’s second space tourist after Dennis Tito, a 60-year-old US businessman and former Nasa technician who made the same trip last April.
The main objective of the current trip is to replace another Soyuz rocket currently attached to the orbiting space platform, part of a regular twice-annual rotation.
”We have a very busy schedule, yesterday we were working until midnight and I am guessing it will be that way every day we are up here,” Shuttleworth said, adding that after three days in space he was suffering from gravity-loss related backache.
”I got a bit of backpain, apparently that is a symptom of the spine stretching from the lack of gravity and the way water is distributed in the body.
”I guess I am maybe a couple of centimetres taller but sadly it won’t last after we get back to the ground,” added Shuttleworth, whose space trip works out at almost $85 000 an hour.
He spoke to President Thabo Mbeki via satellite on Saturday in a show broadcast on pay-television.
Mbeki congratulated him on becoming the first African in space, or ”Afronaut” as he is sometimes called.
In his homeland, the amateur cosmonaut’s journey was initially greeted with scepticism but has since been acclaimed as an event ranking with Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.
”The whole continent is proud that at last we have one of our own people from Africa up in space taking part in cutting edge developments with regard to science and technology,” Mbeki said.
Shuttleworth trained for eight months in Russia and one week at Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, and will return to Earth with his fellow cosmonauts on May 5.
Meanwhile, a senior Russian space official revealed that Moscow hoped to sell a ticket on future space shots to other millionaires, starting in October, in a desperate bid to fund the country’s cash-strapped space programme.
US teen idol Lance Bass from boy band ‘N Sync spent a weekend in Moscow last month undergoing preliminary tests in a bid to become the first pop star in space. – Sapa-AFP