THE Russian Soyuz shuttle taking South African Mark Shuttleworth to the International Space Station (ISS) reached orbit successfully on Thursday, Russian space flight control said.
The Soyuz shuttle blasted off at 10:27 Moscow time (0627 GMT) carrying Shuttleworth, a 28-year-old South African Internet magnate, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gidzenko and Italian Air Force pilot Roberto Vittori on a 10-day mission.
The launch went smoothly and as scheduled, officials at mission control outside Moscow announced immediately after takeoff. The Soyuz is expected to dock with the international station on Saturday at 11:57 a.m. Moscow time (0757 GMT).
Shuttleworth paid $20-million for the journey, which began from the same cosmodrome in now-independent Kazakhstan where the Soviet Union inaugurated the space race, sending up the world’s first satellite in 1957 and the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, four years later.
The money will be paid in installments that will be complete only after the team returns to Earth on May 5.
Shuttleworth admitted to feeling a bit jittery about his voyage into orbit, a trip that he’s been dreaming about since childhood.
”I have some nervousness and some anxiety – I am not a professional astronaut,” Shuttleworth said on the eve of the launch.
This team’s mission, named ”Marco Polo,” is to drop off a fresh Soyuz rocketship to the space station. A Soyuz is kept docked as a lifeboat and replaced every six months to keep it fresh.
”We are ready. We are sure of ourselves and our hardware,” flight commander Gidzenko, the only one on the crew with space experience, told journalists on Wednesday.
Newspapers gave splash treatment to the upcoming trip by 28-year-old South African millionaire Mark Shuttleworth aboard a Russian shuttle to the International Space Station, and authorities said they were expecting huge benefits for South Africa ? especially a surge in schoolchildren’s interest in science.
Shuttleworth, who made his millions in information technology, is due to lift off Thursday at 8:26 am South African time (0626 GMT) from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, along with mission commander Yury Gidzenko and Italian cosmonaut Roberto Vittori.
He paid $20-million for the trip, but will serve as a full crew member, carrying out scientific experiments requested by South African researchers.
”African eyes on Mark” declared The Citizen, while The Star devoted a third of its front page to a photograph of a train bearing the Soyuz to the launch pad. ”Mark’s rocket ready,” it said.
The Sowetan, with a mostly black readership, also trumpeted the trip by the white Capetonian, declaring: ”1st African in space carries hope of a continent”.
Its editorial declared that Thursday would be a ”Great and proud day for Africa,” and gave him the accolade of ulivulindlela – Zulu for ”pathfinder of note”.
Newspapers first criticised the trip as self-indulgent, but swung round as Shuttleworth showed he was serious about conducting experiments that would benefit South Africa and launched a ”Hip to be square” (written as a mathematical formula – Hip2b2) campaign for schoolchildren.
”Some question the whole publicity bun fight concerning what is really a very rich young man buying what he wants,” the Saturday Star noted last weekend.
”But the Cape Town boytjie (”lad”) … is much more than just a rich thrill-seeker or space tourist. On his eight-day mission, he will take along genuine, and valuable experiments to perform in zero gravity on behalf of South African scientists. He didn’t have to do that.”
Shuttleworth will conduct biology experiments involving rat and ewe stem cells, studying their development in microgravity and injecting several elements into them.
Research on HIV proteins also forms part of his mission, reflecting South Africa’s unhappy status as home to the world’s largest number of HIV-positive citizens ? around five million ? with some 70 000 babies born with the virus every year.
The education ministry, taking part in the ”First African in Space” (FAIS) project, hopes the trip will increase interest in mathematics and science by South Africa’s schoolchildren, who lag by international standards, particularly black children.
A South African Institute for Race Relations report published at the end of last year noted a spectacular catch-up on their white peers by black pupils since the end of apartheid in 1994, but noted that major differences remained in some subjects.
Black graduates outnumber whites 10-to-one in such fields as languages and literature, but whites outnumber blacks two-to-one in mathematics and eight-to-one in industrial science and technology.
A four-day FAIS forum held in Pretoria at the beginning of April studied ways to develop mathematics and science teaching in schools, and Shuttleworth is planning to talk to several schools from the space station over a radio link.
”His trip can give pupils the sense that these things are possible through hard work and determination, said education ministry deputy director general Khetsi Lehoko.
”It is important that we bring his experiences closer to children and use them as a motivational tool.”
Shuttleworth, in a message to the schoolchildren of South Africa, declared: ”To all who witness the achievement of my dream as I am launched to the stars, consider this: Whatever your own dream, consider the launching pad in life offered by science and mathematics, and step forward to them as the most powerful springboards to launch you into the future, and the realisation of all you wish for yourself.” – Sapa-AFP