One Small Step for Bloggers...

Anousheh Ansari, the world's first female space tourist, has been blogging about her experience aboard the International Space Station and sending back videos, which are posted on the X Prize Spaceblog. Ansari, a 40-year-old, Iranian-born entrepreneur from Dallas, Texas, paid $20 million for a 10 day journey to the ISS. In one of her entries about experiencing weightlessness, Ansari writes, "I guess the closest thing to moving in weightlessness is floating in water. But there is a major difference. In water when you move your arms and legs, you move… in here you can move your arms and legs all you want, but you are not going anywhere. The only thing that can help you move is the gentle air flow from the fans…The guys up here wanted to show me how this concept works so they put me in the middle of the Node, which is one of the American Modules, and I couldn’t reach anything to push myself… so I was just floating in the middle of the Node and no matter how much I moved myself I did not go anywhere. They were all laughing at me and finally the gentle breeze from the fan slowly got me close to a handle on the ceiling and I was able to free myself." Ansari left the International Space Station today and is returning home aboard the Soyuz TMA-8 spaceship, which will land in Kazakhstan this evening. The timeline for her return can be found here.