Charles Simonyi Becomes Fifth Paying Visitor to the Space Station

A Soyuz capsule carrying US-Hungarian entrepreneur Charles Simonyi and two Russian cosmonauts reached the International Space Station on 9 April 2007, docking at 7:10 p.m. GMT. Simonyi and crew members Oleg Kotov and Fyodor Yurchikhin transferred aboard the station roughly two hours later.

Simonyi, who built his wealth as a software executive at Microsoft, is scheduled to depart the ISS on 20 April alongside the outgoing crew: Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and American Miguel Lopez-Alegria. Kotov and Yurchikhin will remain on board for a 190-day rotation.

Simonyi is the fifth private citizen to purchase a seat on a station mission. The four before him were Dennis Tito of the United States (2001), South African Mark Shuttleworth (2002), American Greg Olsen (2005), and Iranian-American Anousheh Ansari (2006).

His seat, booked through Space Adventures, carried a price tag of $25 million. The company is also developing two future products: a lunar flyby at $100 million and a five-minute sub-orbital flight at $100,000.

Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in April 2007, in its own words.