First female space tourist back on Earth

ANOUSHEH Ansari, the world’s first female paying space tourist, returned to Earth yesterday after 11 days in space capped by the bone-jarring journey home from the international space station.

Ms 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.

After the capsule entered the Earth’s atmosphere, search and rescue teams in three planes and 12 helicopters tracked the trajectory and scrambled to help pull the crew from the craft, which landed on its side.