<< BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (AP) -- The world's second space tourist lifted off Thursday on a Russian rocket from the Baikonur launchpad in Central Asia, heading for the International Space Station.
The Soyuz-U rocket blasted off at 2:27 a.m. EDT (0627 GMT) carrying Mark 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.
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The launch went smoothly and as scheduled, and the rocket reached orbit about eight minutes later, officials at mission control outside Moscow announced immediately after liftoff.
The 161-foot (49-meter) Soyuz-U booster delivered the Soyuz TM-34 spacecraft into an orbit that will lead to a docking with the frontier outpost Saturday at 3:57 a.m. EDT (0757 GMT). The docking will be carried live on NASA TV.
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. >>
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/soyuz_launch_020425.html
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