IRANIAN-born Anousheh Ansari, the world's first female paying space tourist, returned to Earth yesterday after an 11-day sojourn in space, capped by a bone-jarring journey from the international space station.
Ansari, Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and US astronaut Jeffrey Williams had left the station aboard a cramped Russian Soyuz capsule a little over three hours before landing as dawn broke over the steppes of Kazakhstan.
Russian space officials said all three felt well. But the rigours of the journey and the re-adjustment from the weightlessness they'd experienced on the ISS were clear as they sat still strapped in their seats outside the capsule.
Mrs. Ansari and her fellow astronauts left Earth, on Monday, Sept. 18, in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, part of a crew-exchange flight to the International Space Station.
And beware - even in space, there be bloggers!
