Space Adventures' Orbital Spaceflight Candidate, Greg Olsen, Confirmed to the Soyuz TMA-7 Crew

Space Adventures' Orbital Spaceflight Candidate, Greg Olsen, Confirmed to
the Soyuz TMA-7 Crew

Third private space explorer scheduled to launch to the International Space
Station this October
Space Adventures Press Releases:

July 27, 2005

Space Adventures, Ltd., the world's leading space experiences company,
announced today that American technology entrepreneur Gregory Olsen, Ph.D.
has been confirmed to the Soyuz TMA-7 crew which is currently planned for
launch to the International Space Station (ISS) on October 1 from the
Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Dr. Olsen will be joining the 12th
Expedition Crew which will also include NASA astronaut William McArthur and
cosmonaut Valery Tokarev.

Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures, the company which
organized the spaceflights for the world's first private space explorers,
American businessman Dennis Tito and the "First African in Space" Mark
Shuttleworth, said, "I am extremely pleased that Greg has been named to the
Soyuz TMA-7 crew. He is in the process of completing the cosmonaut training
program, and as declared by the Russian space agency, he's in excellent
condition and we enthusiastically look forward to his launch."

Dr. Olsen, chairman of the Board of Directors and co-founder of Sensors
Unlimited, Inc., Princeton, N.J., commented, "I have been committed to this
orbital mission ever since Space Adventures announced my candidacy last
year. Since then, I have completed over 500 hours of cosmonaut training at
Star City and am excited to finish my preparations. I also look forward to
finalizing the components of my remote sensing and astronomy research
projects that I plan to conduct while aboard the space station."

"We are pleased to confirm Dr. Olsen as a member of the next Soyuz crew. His
determination and dedication to this mission should be seen as highly
commendable and respected by the entire space community," stated Anatoly
Perminov, chief of the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation (FSA).
"Dr. Olsen will be the first space tourist launched since the Columbia
tragedy; we look forward to many future private missions."

Last year, several weeks into his training program, Dr. Olsen underwent a
routine medical evaluation in which a health condition was detected that
prohibited him from continuing his training. The condition has since been
remedied, and, after a re-evaluation, Dr. Olsen received clearance on May
14, 2005 to resume his cosmonaut training. The back-up Soyuz TMA-7 crew for
the mission includes Sergey Kostenko, Alexander Lazutkin and Jeff Williams.

Dr. Olsen, born in 1945 in Brooklyn, N.Y., was raised in a working class
family. His father was an electrician and his mother a schoolteacher. He
graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University with a bachelor's of science
and master's degree in physics. He then went on to graduate from the
University of Virginia with a doctorate in materials science. From 1972 to
1983, he worked at RCA Laboratories, now known as the Sarnoff Corporation.
In 1984, Dr. Olsen started his first company, Epitaxx and later sold it for
$12 million (USD). He founded Sensors Unlimited, Inc. in 1992, later sold it
for $700 million (USD) in 2000. Sensors Unlimited develops highly sensitive
near-infrared cameras.

Space Adventures, the only company to have successfully launched private
space explorers to the International Space Station, is headquartered in
Arlington, Va. with offices in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Moscow and Tokyo. It
offers a variety of programs such as Zero-Gravity and MiG flights, cosmonaut
training, spaceflight qualification programs and reservations on future
suborbital spacecrafts. The company's advisory board comprises Apollo 11
moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, shuttle astronauts Sam Durrance, Robert (Hoot)
Gibson, Byron Lichtenberg, Norm Thagard, Kathy Thornton, Pierre Thuot,
Charles Walker and Skylab astronaut Owen Garriott.

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Jacques :-)

www.spacepatches.info