Aspiring Space Tourist Passes Medical Exam for Soyuz Flight

 By SPACE.com Staff
 posted: 02:20 pm ET
 30 August 2001 

 Three aspiring space travelers training with the Russians have passed
 their medical exams required for commercial trips aboard Soyuz capsules
 to the International Space Station, it was reported Thursday.

 South African Mark Shuttleworth, 28, and two astronauts from the European
 Space Agency are set to fly aboard to the station in 2002, according to
 Russian Information Agency Novosti. The astronauts are Italian Roberto
 Vittori, 37, and Frank De Winne, 40, from Belgium. 

 All have been preparing for spaceflight at the Russian Space Agency's
 Star City complex outside Moscow, where cosmonauts receive their training.

 Vittori is scheduled for an April flight. The flight dates for the other
 two will be decided later, the Cosmonauts' Training Center outside Moscow
 told RIA Novosti.

 In October, French astronaut Claudie Andre-Deshays will travel along with
 two Russian cosmonauts on a commercial flight to the station. She
 currently is finishing her pre-flight training. 

 Andre-Deshays became the first Frenchwoman to go into space when she flew
 on Mir in August 1996. She is also the first female astronaut to qualify
 as a "Soyuz Return Commander," the person in charge of a three-person
 Russian capsule on the homeward trip from outer space.