Female space tourist goes out of this world

A TELECOMS entrepreneur blasted off yesterday on a Russian rocket bound for the international space station, achieving her dream of becoming the world’s first paying female space tourist.

However, the astronauts on board the space station were forced to don protective gear after a harmful chemical started leaking from an oxygen vent.

Anousheh Ansari was accompanied by a US-Russian crew on the Soyuz TMA-9 capsule, which entered orbit about 10 minutes after lift-off from the Russian cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.