Space tourist lands safely after joining space station mission
Advert
American space tourist Richard Garriott and two Russian cosmonauts, Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, landed safely in Kazakhstan after Garriott spent 10 days aboard the space station and 12 total days in space.
According to Space.com, Garriott hitched a ride with the new crew of the space station, Commander Michael Fincke of NASA and Russian flight engineer Yury Lonchakov, and met the old space station crew, Volkov and Kononenko, as they finished up their 199-day mission.
Garriott performed many tasks during his 10-day stay on the station including science experiments, education events, photography and painting artwork, trying not to spill the paint in zero-gravity, reported Space.com.
"I would definitely say that this has met, and in many ways, exceeded my expectations," Garriott said before leaving the station.
Garriott, the creator of the Ultima online computer game series, paid $30 million for his space trip and became the sixth paying space visitor. In addition, Garriott is a second-generation astronaut, whose father was NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, Ph.D. Owen Garriott flew aboard NASA's Skylab station in 1973 and the shuttle Columbia in 1983, reported Space.com.
