Home after flying high

ASTANA (Kazakhstan), MAY 6. The capsule carrying the world's first paying space tourist landed successfully in the Kazak steppe today, the Russian mission control said, ending Mr. Dennis Tito's multimillion dollar cosmos adventure.

Just over three hours earlier, the Russian Soyuz capsule had undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) and embarked on its lightning return to earth.

Before their flight, Mr. Tito and his two cosmonaut colleagues, Mr. Talgat Musabayev and Mr. Yuri Baturin, gathered with the three astronauts in the ISS for a final video linkup with the mission control in Korolyov, outside Moscow.

``Personally, I've had the time of my life. I've achieved my dream and nothing could have been better. I thank everybody for it,'' Mr. Tito said.

A `devotion' to Kazakh

While the world's media concentrated today on the return to earth of Mr. Tito, journalists in Kazakhstan, where his trip started and finished, had more pressing concerns. For Mr. Musabayev, who accompanied Mr. Tito, was born in Kazakhstan. Although Mr. Musabayev is a Russian national, like a good local boy he took a book by the Kazakh President into space.

``I took some Kazakh soil and the Kazakh flag,'' he said at a news briefing at the airport in Astana, the capital, where a huge crowd of local journalists virtually ignored Mr. Tito and bombarded Mr. Musabayev with questions. ``And my book and my portrait,'' chipped in a smiling President, Mr. Nursultan Nazarbayev.

``Yes, that's right, and the Quran as well,'' Mr. Musabayev added. ``It was all devoted to the 10th anniversary of Kazakhstan's independence.'' Kazakhstan, which became independent after the break-up of the erstwhile Soviet Union in 1991, is the home of the Russian space launch centre at Baikonur. Russia now rents the site from Kazakhstan.

- AP, Reuters

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