Moscow - The world's fifth space tourist, Hungarian-born American billionaire Charles Simonyi, returned to Earth on Saturday, describing trip as "terrific".
The Soyuz capsule carrying Simonyi, 58, and two crew members from the International Space Station, Mikhail Tyurin of Russia and American Miguel Lopez-Alegria, touched down as planned in the steppes of Kazakhstan, a spokesperson for Russia's space centre said.
Television pictures showed Simonyi smiling and looking relaxed as he lay on the grass of the steppe, his space helmet off, enjoying the sunshine.
"It was terrific," he told the Vesti 24 channel in English. "It's good to be back on Earth."
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| 'It's good to be back on Earth' |
The former Microsoft whizz kid who made his fortune helping develop the company's Word and Excel software broke the record for space tourists by spending 14 days in space.
The lift-off on April 7 from the Baikonur launchpad drew more than the usual attention as he received a cosmic bon voyage from US homemaking queen Martha Stewart, fuelling the rampant romantic gossip about the couple.
The relationship did influence Simonyi's time on the space station, where he planned to prepare a gourmet dinner for his ISS hosts, along with conducting experiments and recording his impressions on an Internet blog, www.charlesinspace.com.
Stewart was not in Kazakhstan for the landing back on Earth, a spokesman in Moscow for Space Adventures, which organises the multi-million-dollar excursions, said. The US-based company markets one of three seats on the Soyuz on behalf of the Russian Space Agency.
An unidentified woman was seen on television embracing Simonyi on his return and heard saying, "I haven't been through what you've been through," as Simonyi explained that the trip back to Earth was difficult because he could not move his head during the entire descent.
"You just look great," she added.
The software engineer had arrived at the ISS on April 9, with Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Fyodor Yurchikhin who were relieving Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria for a 190-day shift in orbit.
The three returning space travellers were to be taken by helicopter to Karaganda, about 200km south-east of the Kazahk capital Astana, where after undergoing medical examinations they would be flown to Moscow, the ITAR-TASS news agency said.
Simonyi, who left his native Hungary at the age of 17 for the United States, was the fifth tourist to travel to the ISS, after Dennis Tito (2001) and Greg Olsen (2005) of the United States, South Africa's Mark Shuttleworth (2002) and an American of Iranian origin, Anousheh Ansari (2006).
Space Adventures plans to expand its offerings next year to include a $100-million (about R750-million) orbit of the moon and a $100 000 (about R750 000) budget option: five minutes of sub-orbital space flight.
Eric Andersen, boss of Space Adventures, said when Simonyi took off that the company had another client for a flight this year who would go public within a few months.
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