首個“太空小丑”返回地球
The first clown in space, Canadian circus tycoon Guy Laliberte, arrived safely back on earth Sunday touching down in a Russian Soyuz capsule in Kazakhstan, the Russian mission control centre said.
The capsule, also carrying Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and US astronaut Michael Barratt, landed in Kazakhstan's steppe at 0431 GMT after travelling from the International Space Station (ISS).
"The team took the landing quite well, they are feeling fine," the space official commented as quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency.
Laliberte is the billionaire founder of the popular Cirque du Soleil and the seventh person in history to spend millions of dollars from a personal fortune to fly into space.
The Canadian, who arrived at the ISS on October 2, could be the last space tourist for some time as seats will be limited aboard the Soyuz once NASA takes its long-serving shuttles out of service from 2010.
The Cirque du Soleil, which Laliberte founded in 1984, fuses acrobatics with music and has made him the world's 261st richest man with a fortune of 2.5 billion dollars, according to Forbes magazine.
據俄羅斯地面飛行控制中心消息，首個“太空小丑”、加拿大馬戲團富翁蓋•拉利伯特於週日安全返回地球，乘坐俄羅斯聯盟號飛船降落在哈薩克斯坦境內。
這架載人飛船結束國際空間站之旅，于格林尼治時間4時31分降落在哈薩克斯坦的大草原上。同行的還有一名俄羅斯宇航員傑納迪•帕達爾卡和一名美國宇航員邁克爾•巴勒特，
俄羅斯新聞通訊社援引宇航局官員的評論說：“他們的着陸很成功，現在他們感覺良好。”
拉利伯特是加拿大廣受歡迎的“太陽馬戲團”的創始人，他身家達億萬，是歷史上第七位自費花百萬美元前往太空旅遊的人。
這名加拿大人於10月2日抵達國際空間站。他可能將成爲短期內的最後一位太空遊客，因爲美國國家航空航天局的幾架服役年限較長的航天飛機計劃於2010年退役，屆時俄羅斯聯盟號載人飛船上的席位將會受限。
《福布斯》雜誌稱，拉利伯特於1984年創建的“太陽馬戲團”將雜技與音樂結合了起來。他憑藉太陽馬戲團在全球富人榜上排第261位，資產達25億美元。
Vocabulary:
tycoon:a wealthy and powerful businessperson or industrialist; a magnate （企業界的）大亨；巨頭
cosmonaut: 和astronaut一樣，都是“宇航員”的意思，但是cosmonaut專指被俄羅斯航空及航天局僱傭的宇航員或前蘇聯的宇航員。
steppe:a vast semiarid grass-covered plain, as found in southeast Europe, Siberia, and central North America（西伯利亞一帶沒樹木的）大草原；乾草原
GMT: Greenwich mean time 格林尼治標準時間
fuse:mix（融合；結合）
