英国著名女歌手莎拉•布莱曼将以私人游客身份访问国际空间站。届时，她将成为首个在太空放歌的专业音乐人。布莱曼表示“太空之旅是我的梦，这个梦终于要成真了。这是目前为止我生命中最让我兴奋的事情。”布莱曼的具体行程将有俄罗斯联邦航天局和国际空间站共同决定。国际空间站项目组负责人表示，布莱曼已经通过了相关的心理和身体检查。结束2013年的巡演后，布莱曼将在莫斯科的宇航员培训中心接受6个月的准备训练，她将是造访国际空间站的第七位私人游客。负责私人游客访问太空的公司未透露布莱曼为此行支付的费用，不过上一位太空私人游客所支付的费用为3500万美元。
British singer Sarah Brightman is to travel as a space tourist to the International Space Station.
British singer Sarah Brightman will travel as a space tourist to the International Space Station.
The classical recording artist, once married to Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, will be part of a three-person crew flying to the space station.
After completing a tour in 2013, Ms Brightman will embark on six months of preparation at the Star City cosmonaut training centre in Moscow.
She will be the seventh space tourist to visit the station.
Once there, she says she intends to become the first professional musician to sing from space.
"This voyage is a product of a dream, my dream. Finally it can be a reality. I am more excited about this than anything I have done in my life to date," she said at a news conference in Moscow.
She added that the schedule for her flight would "be determined very shortly by (Russian federal space agency) Roscosmos and the ISS partners."
Alexey Krasnov, head of the ISS program at Roscosmos, said Ms Brightman had passed the required mental and physical examinations to fly into space.
Space Adventures, the Vienna-based company that organizes flights for private spacefarers, did not disclose how much Ms Brightman had paid for her seat on the Soyuz.
But the last space tourist, Cirque du Soleil chief executive Guy Laliberte, paid around $35m for the privilege.
Sarah Brightman began her career with the dance troupe Hot Gossip, which had a chart hit in 1978 with I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper.
She subsequently starred on the West End stage in Cats and Phantom of the Opera, both penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber, whom she married in 1984.
The pair divorced in 1990 and Brightman embarked on a solo singing career. She helped popularize the classical crossover genre, scoring a worldwide hit with her duet with Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, Time To Say Goodbye. (Read by China Daily website editor Nelly Min)
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