The first female "space tourist," who has stated that she was inspired as a child by Star Trek, has boarded the International Space Station (ISS) for a nine-day stay, and has begun the first-ever blog from space.

"I arrived in the station a few hours ago and it feels like home. I have been making notes all along the launch and I will be posting a blog on the trip," wrote Anousheh Ansari in her first e-mail from space, directed toward X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis, posted at spaceblog.xprize.org. "I cannot keep my eyes off the windows. Earth is magnificent and peaceful from up here. You don't see any of those awful things you hear on the news, from up here."

"The Earth is so beautiful and if we could all see it this way I'm sure we would do everything in our power to preserve it. I truly hope that more and more people get to experience this trip first hand."

Ansari, 40, is an Iranian-born telecommunications tycoon from Texas. According to various news reports, while growing up in pre-revolution Tehran she watched reruns of Star Trek and dreamt of becoming an astronaut and seeing the stars. (On the second page of the Spaceblog, her Sept. 18 entry titled "The Day Has Come" is signed, "Live Long and Prosper my friends.")

She is the fourth civilian in history who has paid money to travel in space, paying roughly $18.5 million for the trip. Ansari is also the first woman in that league and follows in the footsteps of Dennis Tito in 2001, Mark Shuttleworth in 2002 and Greg Olsen in 2005.

Ansari left Earth Monday from Kazakhstan in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft along with the new Space Station crew, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, and they successfully docked on Wednesday. Ansari will spend her nine days aboard the ISS performing medical experiments for the European Space Agency, making films for educational programs, and of course, blogging her experiences. She will then return to Earth with two members of the previous ISS crew.

An active proponent of commercial space travel, Ansari and her family provided the title sponsorship for the Ansari X-Prize, a $10 million competition in 2004 won by Burt Rutan for building the first privately funded manned spacecraft to reach space twice within two weeks. After completing her space journey, Ansari will attend the next major X-Prize event, which is the topic of our next item...

X-Prize Cup Tickets on Sale

On October 20 and 21 in southern New Mexico, Diamandis' X-Prize Foundation will hold an international exposition dedicated to the future of space exploration, which will include three new technology competitions. Dubbed "X PRIZE CUP '06 - Moon 2.0," the festival will take place at the Las Cruces International Airport, and tickets are now available to the public.

A purse totaling $2.5 million will be awarded to the winners of the "Lunar Lander Challenge" and "Vertical Rocket Challenge" — both focused on privately-funded vehicles capable of landing on the Moon — and the "Space Elevator Games" (the space elevator is the concept used in the Voyager episode "Rise"). There will also be high-powered rocket launches, static engine firings, "rocket belt" fly-overs, and a wide array of other demonstrations and educational activities.

Tickets for adults are $10 for one day or $15 for two days. Children and students pay $5 a day, and active military personnel are eligible for a free day pass. VIP packages are available for $250. Visit www.xprizecup.com and click on "Buy Tickets" in the upper right corner.

It is during this event that Space Services Inc. (aka Celestis) will launch a rocket carrying the ashes of James Doohan, astronaut Gordon Cooper, Star Trek writer/director/producer John Meredyth Lucas and others into space on an "Earth-Return" mission (related article). Currently the launch, dubbed the "Legacy Flight," is targeted for Saturday the 21st, with public memorials for Doohan and Cooper planned for Friday the 20th (subject to change). However, these launch activities are being handled by Celestis separately from the X-Prize event — in other words, you don't need to buy a ticket to the X-Cup to attend. We expect to bring you complete information about the Doohan memorial and launch, including how to RSVP, next week.

The October launch memorializing Doohan is described in detail in this Space.com article.

Star Trek Convention Reports in Science Community

The 40th anniversary of Star Trek and its related activities have drawn a lot of attention from many quarters, including the scientific community where there are numerous Trek fans. As a result, representatives of these science-types attended some of the recent conventions and have filed their own reports.

The Planetary Society, the world's largest space advocacy group, has a weekly audio program called "Planetary Radio" that runs at www.planetary.org/radio, which normally covers scientific topics (such as the downgrading of Pluto from planet status). But the Sept. 18 episode is a report from the floor of the Las Vegas Hilton during the big Creation Entertainment event last month. Host Mat Kaplan talked to Eugene W. Roddenberry Jr. at the Roddenberry.com table in the vendor's room, and Michael & Denise Okuda in the Christie's booth. He also had a private interview with Robert Picardo (a member of the advisory board of the Planetary Society) about the phenomenon of Star Trek, and included a clip from the convention when Picardo and Ethan Phillips performed a play they co-wrote about a post-"Endgame" conversation between the Doctor and Neelix.

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