Kazakhstan Space:
A billionaire Canadian circus tycoon began his space voyage on Wednesday to the International Space Station.
A Soyuz capsule carrying Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte and two fellow astronauts lifted off on schedule, on Wednesday from Kazakhstan's Baikonur launch facility atop a towering Russian rocket.
Laliberte, US astronaut Jeffrey Williams and Russian cosmonaut Maxim Surayev got a jubilant send-off from friends and family at the Russian launch facility on the Kazakh steppe. They are expected to arrive at the orbital outpost Friday.
Laliberte plans to help publicise the world's growing shortage of clean water. But he's also doing his best to make the trip fun. The entertainer donned a bulbous red clown nose before boarding the capsule and brought several of the novelty noses for his crew mates. Surayev hanged a toy lion in front of him after takeoff to signal the beginning of weightlessness.
Laliberte paid 35 million US dollars for his flight. He has a 95 percent stake in Cirque du Soleil, a circus arts and theatre performance company that turned 25 this year.
The Soyuz team is scheduled to continue construction of the space station, where in-orbit work began in 1998. Six shuttle flights remain to wrap it up. The station has cost more than 100 billion US dollars, paid by the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and the 18-nation European Space Agency.
Laliberte may be one of the last private visitors to the space station for several years as NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) retires its shuttle programme and turns to the Russian space agency to ferry US astronauts to the orbiting lab, crowding out places for tourists.