Cape Canaveral (Florida): She says space smells like a "burned almond cookie." She praises the wonders of Velcro, and describes the hazards of trying to wash her hair in zero gravity.
Space tourist Anousheh Ansari's blog offers uncommon insight into everyday life on the international space station through the eyes of an American businesswoman.
Her 10-day adventure ends on Friday night, when she touches down in a Soyuz vehicle on the steppes of Kazakhstan along with Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and US astronaut Jeff Williams.
"It is hard for me to write tonight," she wrote in her last posting from space. "My emotions are high and there are millions of thoughts going through my head."
The 40-year-old Iranian-born Dallas suburbanite, who sometime signed her entries "Space Cadet," paid $ 20 million for her adventure. She was a last-minute substitute for a Japanese businessman who failed a medical test for space
flight.
Although she has a master's degree in engineering and made a fortune in the telecommunications industry, Ansari's blog entries have been free of tech-heavy jargon, exhibiting an enthusiastic, chatty style.
She tackled topics that vintage, tough-guy astronauts such as Alan Shepard surely would have avoided: motion sickness, the clumsiness of weightlessness and hygiene.
"Well my friends, I must admit keeping good hygiene in space is not easy!" she wrote in the opening of one entry as if a columnist for Cosmopolitan.
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