British singer Sarah Brightman has long been fascinated with space and the news that she will travel to the International Space Station fulfills a lifelong dream.

The soprano who sang I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper in 1978 and is known for performing as Christine in The Phantom of the Opera announced last year she would travel to the International Space Station.

She could be the first civilian in space since Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté. Russia has limited space available for space tourism and slowed its civilian space program in 2010.

“That world has been closed off to us for a time, but it’s opening up to us again,” Brightman said in an interview with CBC News.

Touring in support of her album Dreamchaser, which will be released Tuesday, she says she has passed all the medical and psychological tests for space flight, but still has much to do to prepare for her adventure.

The classically trained singer is interested in participating in experiments that look at what happens in her body when she sings in space. And she wants to create an international concert in which she joins in from the space station.

Brightman even sees parallels between the rigours of touring and enduring the discomfort of space travel.

She says her new album tries to capture some of the optimism and excitement of life in the 1960s, when space travel was new.

“I was brought up in the 1960s and actually was lucky enough to watch on a black and white television screen the first man walk on the moon. Space exploration seemed part of what we were expecting as children and it seems that something completely out of the box that it is going to be a reality,” she said.

Although there is no definite date for her space flight, it is likely to be in 2015.

Quelle: CBC

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Moscow.- British singer Sarah Brightman will travel to the International Space Station, ISS, in September 2015, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, Oleg Ostapenko, announced on Monday.

"Early next year, Brightman will begin training for the flight," Ostapenko said at a press conference.

He explained that the training will last six months and may require Brightman to reside permanently at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, located on the outskirts of Moscow. That means she will have to take a brief respite from her musical career.

Brightman will get aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft for ten days accompanied by two astronauts, Sergei Volkov of Russia and Andreas Mogensen, from Denmark.

Once the training has been successfully completed, Brightman will become the eighth space tourist in history and the first since September 2009, when Canadian billionaire Guy Laliberte, the CEO of Cirque du Soleil, flew to the ISS.

At the time of the flight, Brightman will be 55 years old, becoming one of the oldest persons to travel into space.

Roscosmos, some experts and former Russian cosmonauts questioned the sincerity of Brightman's wish to fly into space, suggesting that, in reality, it could be just a marketing campaign to sell her records.

However, the performer herself confirmed that Roscosmos had informed her that she had successfully passed the medical and physical tests.

Trips into space for space tourists cost, in the case Laliberte, around $50 million.

Russia had previously decided to suspend tours to the ISS due to the shortage of living quarters now that the crew aboard the station has doubled to six members, and to the United States' decision to suspend its space shuttle program.

Quelle: LA PRENSA

She and other future spacefliers headed out from Russia's Star City cosmonaut training complex, near Moscow, into marshlands and a forest setting to practice the procedures they'd have to use in the event of a winter emergency landing. The team learned how to use the emergency kits that are included on the Soyuz spacecraft, how to build a lean-to or a teepee using tree branches and parachute fabric, how to build a fire and other survival skills.

British singer Sarah Brightman, which is training at Zvyozdny Gorodok (Star City) outside Moscow for a space flight to the International Space Station (ISS), will continue her training and exercises at the European Space Agency (ESA) next week, a space industry source told Interfax-AVN.

"Sarah Brightman will undergo a training course at the European Space Agency from April 13 to 16. Then she will return to Russia to continue her training at the Cosmonaut Training Center," the source said.

Brightman's training at NASA is also scheduled for June 22-26, the source said.

"Sarah Brightman's Japanese backup pilot, Satoshi Takamatsu, will also undergo training at the ESA and NASA," he said.

The principal part of the training will take place at Zvyozdny Gorodok. The launch of a space vehicle carrying Brightman, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov (who has already been to space twice) and ESA Astronaut Andreas Mogensen (the first Dane to go to space) is scheduled for September 1.

"The [training] program also envisions sea training to practice the spacecraft crew's actions in case of the landing capsule's splashdown. It will take place on the Black Sea from June 29 to July 3," the source said.

The crew's comprehensive test training is scheduled for August 6-7. "The principal and backup crews are to fly to Baikonur [space center] on August 19, where the final stage of the preflight training will take place," he said.

It was reported earlier that Brightman's flight to the ISS should last from September 1 to 11.

The British singer said at a press conference in Moscow that she planned to sing on board the station to the accompaniment of an orchestra on earth.

Brightman is undergoing a standard training program for flying to the ISS as a space tourist. Brightman and Takamatsu will train for half a year to master the systems of a Soyuz-TMA-M manned spacecraft and the Russian segment of the ISS, practice actions in case of an unscheduled landing in various climatic and geographic zones, take a medical-biological and scientific training course, and study the Russian language.

Sarah Brightman is a British classical crossover soprano. She was born in Berkhamsted not far from London on August 14, 1960. She studied at Egerton-Rothesay School, Grandison College, Elmhurst School For Dance, and Arts Educational School London.

On February 8, 2012, Brightman became a UNESCO Artist for Peace.

She announced her plans to go to space in 2012. Speaking at a press conference in Moscow on October 10, 2012, she said she had started dreaming about going to space while watching a TV broadcast of Neil Armstrong's and Buzz Aldrin's lunar mission in 1969.

Satoshi Takamatsu was born on May 5, 1963. He started his career at the leading Japanese advertising agency Dentsu and played a significant role in a number of its projects as a copywriter and creative director.

Takamatsu won numerous international advertising awards, including the gold at Cannes Lions festival (France), a Grand Clio (U.S.), the Grand Prix at ADFEST (Asia), the gold at London International Awards, and the gold at NY ADC (U.S.). He has been a jury member at numerous international advertising contests.

Takamatsu is the founder and CEO of the companies Space Films and Space Travel. Space Films is a film company providing support to space projects with assistance from the Russian, U.S. and Japanese space agencies.

Quelle: Interfax

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