A HUGE smile across his face, Mark Shuttleworth landed safely in Kazakhstan early on Sunday and said his space voyage was ”the best thing I’ve ever done.”
The charred Soyuz capsule landed right on schedule at 7:51 am Moscow time (0351 GMT) after a more than three-hour descent near the Kazakh town of Arkalyk under bright blue skies, the Associated Press reported.
”It was just the most wonderful experience ever. It was fantastic,” Shuttleworth, a 28-year old Internet millionaire, said after he emerged from the capsule. A bystander handed him a blue egg in honour of Orthodox Easter and his father knelt beside him, talking about the trip.
Shuttleworth won’t soon forget his $20-million voyage. To make sure he’ll have a big souvenir to remind him of the 10-day journey into space, he has bought the Soyuz capsule and his space suit.
Ecstatic, smiling continuously once he emerged from the capsule, Shuttleworth said he would go up in space again – anytime.
Shuttleworth was the last of the crew to come out, and all three were carried to a nearby medical tent for their first checkups.
The landing site was ringed with helicopters and surrounded by medical experts and technicians.
Back in Moscow, Shuttleworth’s mother, Patronelle, who spent the night at Mission Control, covered her face with her hands during the landing, peeked occasionally at the big screen monitoring the landing, and burst into tears after the successful touchdown was announced.
”Complete and absolute relief,” she said over and over.
”It’s not your everyday family experience.” She said she’s been sleeping in snatches over the last week while her son was in space. Her husband had appeared tense as he waited for his son to emerge.
Shuttleworth’s brother, Bradley, was also on hand. ”I’m glad to have him on terra firma. I’m stunned at how fast it went these last 10 days,” he said.
”I wonder if he’ll want to do it again.”
Several hours earlier at 4:31 a.m. Moscow time, 0031 GMT, the capsule had successfully undocked from the International Space Station, starting the descent process.
”I’m quite nervous. It’s been a roller coaster ride,” Patronelle Shuttleworth said. ”You never imagine your son doing something like this. That’s just not something that’s an option for most of us.”
On his last day aboard the station, Shuttleworth caught up on some sleep, allowing himself an extra hour.
But Shuttleworth’s mission was jam-packed with experiments and projects, enough to keep the world’s second paying space tourist busy at work from 6am to about 11:30 p.m. most days.
Five Russian planes, nine helicopters and five cross-country rescue vehicles were on call to retrieve Shuttleworth and his two crewmates, Flight Commander Yuri Gidzenko and rookie Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori, from their landing in the barren Kazakh steppes.
Russian technicians, working from Earth, test-fired the Soyuz’s engines on Thursday in preparation for departure. In a well-rehearsed procedure, a few
hours before undocking, the Soyuz crew switches on the power supply, squeeze into their spacesuits and strap themselves snugly into the cramped quarters.
The three-ton capsule resembles a fiery ball as it plunges at 10 times the speed of sound through the Earth’s atmosphere, its outer wall reaching temperatures of 10 000 degrees Celsius.
A natural drag slows the capsule down and just before impact, a parachute automatically opens, reducing its speed even further.
Just seconds before touching ground, the capsule’s engines fire in an attempt to give the crew a ”soft” landing.
But even a soft landing can still shake-up the crew, whose bodies must quickly adjust from zero-gravity to Earth’s gravitational pull. The Russian Soyuz capsule is also known to frequently end up on its side during landing.
When the world’s first space tourist, American businessman Dennis Tito, returned from his flight last year, he followed an already popular tradition
and took advantage of the help offered him – choosing to be carried in his chair after landing rather than testing out his still-unsteady legs.
Shuttleworth followed in that tradition. After landing, Shuttleworth and the other crew will be evaluated by Russian medical experts, then the trio will return to Russia’s Star City for more observation.
Rick Shuttleworth said when his son is cleared by medical experts, his family plans to take him on holiday. This autumn, the world’s second space
tourist plans a tour around South African schools to promote space studies, his father said. – Sapa-AP