14 DAY TRIAL // Guy Laliberte, the founder of the internationally renowned circus troupe Cirque du Soleil, broadcast his environmental message from aboard the ISS yesterday night, the peak of his activities on the station, before setting off to Earth again today. The show was transmitted live on Onedrop.org and AOL.com, as the billionaire space tourist attempted to raise international public awareness on water issues affecting millions around the world. Laliberte said that being on the International Space Station granted him the possibility of benefiting from more media attention than it would have been possible on Earth, in addition to fulfilling one of his childhood dreams, Space reports.
“I'm very proud today to say that we have a fantastic event. This artistic mission permits me to raise awareness for the water issue,” he said before launching to the space lab on September 30, aboard the Russian-built Soyuz TMA-16 space capsule. “It's going to be a celebrity event – between U2 and Al Gore and all the folks that are going to be talking, it's going to be really interesting,” Eric Anderson said on Thursday. He is the CEO of Space Adventures, a company that mediates agreements between rich individuals and the Russian space agency, RosCosmos, for seats on the Soyuz capsules.
Laliberte is the seventh person to go into space without being affiliated with a space agency. All those who visited the ISS paid hefty sums of money for the amazing opportunity, and the billionaire was no different. For the 11-day trek to the ISS, he paid the Federal Space Agency $35 million. However, he said that the price tag was totally worth it, as he got the chance to advocate the necessity of all people having access to clean-water sources. He founded the ONE DROP Foundation in 2007, with the explicit goal of raising awareness on the issue. His show began last night at 8 pm EDT (0000 GMT, October 10).
He is scheduled to leave for Earth today, aboard the TMA-14 capsule, alongside former ISS Commander Gennady Ivanovich Padalka (RosCosmos), and former ISS flight engineer Michael Barratt (NASA). They are expected to land near the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, some three and a half hours after leaving the ISS. Their departure also marks the end of Expedition 20, and the beginning of Expedition 21. The new Commander is Frank de Winne, the first ESA astronaut to be in charge of the station. The rest of the Expedition 21 crew will be made up of flight engineers Nicole Stott (NASA), Jeff Williams (NASA), Maxim Suraev (RosCosmos), Roman Romanenko (RosCosmos) and Robert Thirsk, of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).