Capsule carrying U.S. billionaire docks on space station

Two Russian cosmonauts and a U.S. billionaire floated into the International Space Station early Tuesday to the earthbound applause of friend Martha Stewart and others at Russian Mission Control.

Stewart was among theRussian andAmerican officials and visitors who were monitoring the docking from the Russian space agency's centre on Moscow's outskirts, as onboard TV cameras showed the Soyuz nearing the station and then jerking to a stop.

She is a friend of Charles Simonyi, an American who shelled out as much as $25 million US to be the world's fifth paying private space traveller.

Simonyi, 58,is known for helping develop two of the world's most popular software applications, Microsoft Corp.'s Word and Excel. He paid Space Adventures Ltd. of Vienna, Va., for the space voyage, saying he has been interested in space exploration since his childhood in the Soviet Union.

The Soyuz capsule docked automatically with the ISS and Simonyi and the cosmonauts entered the space station about 90 minutes later.

A video linkup at Russian Mission Control in Korolyov showed the three smiling and getting hugs and backslaps from the three-member crew already on the station.

The arrival of a new crew is always a happy event, and this time the resident crew is getting an extra treat a gourmet dinner brought by Simonyi.

Special dinner

The menu, including quail marinated in wine, was selected by Stewart, who was on hand at Baikonur for the rocket's launch Saturday.

The dinner is to be eaten on Thursday, which Russia marks as Cosmonauts' Day, the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin making the first manned space flight in 1961.

While at the space station, Simonyi will be conducting a number of experiments, including measuring radiation levels and studying biological organisms inside the lab.

Simonyi is to return to Earth on April 20, along with Russian Mikhail Tyurin and the American astronaut Miguel Lopez-Alegria, who have been on the station since September. The other U.S. astronaut, Sunita Williams, will remain on board with cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov.

Simonyi was born in Hungary but now lives in the United States, where he amassed a fortune through his work with Microsoft.

Simonyi brought with him a sample of the paper computer tapes that he used decades ago when he first learned programming on a bulky Soviet machine called Ural-2.