A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russian cosmonauts and Charles Simonyi, a software engineer at Microsoft has reached the International Space Station.
The three men have reached there after a strenuous two-day journey during which they have to remain seated in their chairs and cannot move around. Charles Simonyi has paid a huge sum of $25 million for the trip.
He will now remain in the International Space Station for a period of 10 days and is scheduled to come back to Earth on April 20th.
The Hungarian-born Simonyi is the 450th person to enter orbit and is the fifth space tourist.
The spacecraft docked at 1910GMT as stated by the Russian Space Centre.
Simonyi will also be celebrating Cosmonauts day with the crew at ISS which is Thursday.
On return Simonyi will be accompanied by Russian Mikhail Tyurin and US astronaut Miguel Lopez-Alegria who have been on the ISS since September. Another astronaut Sunita Williams will remain on the ISS and will be accompanied by incoming cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov.
Mr. Simonyi will also carry out a series of experiments aboard the ISS to test the amount of radiation he is exposed to while on board the ISS. His aim is to develop a map of the station’s radiation environment.
Image Credit: NASA
Via: BBC
