Space tourist, crew touch down

POSTED: 11:23 p.m. EDT, September 28, 2006

ARKALYK, Kazakhstan (AP) -- The capsule carrying a female space tourist touched down Friday on the Kazakh steppe after a bone-jarring journey from the international space station.
Anousheh Ansari, Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and U.S. astronaut Jeffrey Williams had left the station aboard a cramped Russian Soyuz capsule about three hours earlier. 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 the crew out of the craft.
Officials monitoring the landing from Russia's Mission Control outside Moscow applauded after confirming that the capsule had landed in the target zone around 56 miles north of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, at 5:14 a.m. Moscow time. The crew felt well, Mission Control said.
Officials monitoring the landing from Russia's Mission Control outside Moscow applauded after confirming that the capsule had landed in the target zone.
Video monitors at Mission Control showed Ansari smiling weakly as she sat in a chair surrounded by high grass after exiting the Soyuz. An unidentified official presented her with a large bouquet of red roses. Vinogradov and Williams sat in chairs nearby. Temperatures hovered around 27 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 3 degrees Celsius).
Ansari's husband Hamid surprised her, coming up from behind her chair and planting a kiss on her face. Rescuers then picked up all three chairs and carried them to waiting helicopters for the flight to Kustanai, Kazakhstan, where they were to board a plane for the trip to the Russian cosmonauts' training center at Star City outside Moscow.
They were accompanied by snails, worms and barley grown in experiments conducted aboard the orbiting station.
"Anousheh has done a good job -- she's one of the team," ITAR-Tass quoted Vinogradov as saying.
The space travelers were to undergo a quick medical evaluation through monitors attached to their bodies as soon as they exited the capsule. The information, transmitted to a nearby medical tent, is then sent to the U.S. space agency in Houston for analysis.