首个“太空小丑”返回地球

The first clown in space, Canadian circus tycoon Guy Laliberte, arrived safely back on earth Sunday touching down in a Russian Soyuz capsule in Kazakhstan, the Russian mission control centre said.

The capsule, also carrying Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and US astronaut Michael Barratt, landed in Kazakhstan's steppe at 0431 GMT after travelling from the International Space Station (ISS).

"The team took the landing quite well, they are feeling fine," the space official commented as quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency.

Laliberte is the billionaire founder of the popular Cirque du Soleil and the seventh person in history to spend millions of dollars from a personal fortune to fly into space.

The Canadian, who arrived at the ISS on October 2, could be the last space tourist for some time as seats will be limited aboard the Soyuz once NASA takes its long-serving shuttles out of service from 2010.

The Cirque du Soleil, which Laliberte founded in 1984, fuses acrobatics with music and has made him the world's 261st richest man with a fortune of 2.5 billion dollars, according to Forbes magazine.

据俄罗斯地面飞行控制中心消息，首个“太空小丑”、加拿大马戏团富翁盖．拉利伯特于周日安全返回地球，乘坐俄罗斯联盟号飞船降落在哈萨克斯坦境内。

这架载人飞船结束国际空间站之旅，于格林尼治时间4时31分降落在哈萨克斯坦的大草原上。同行的还有一名俄罗斯宇航员杰纳迪．帕达尔卡和一名美国宇航员迈克尔．巴勒特，

俄罗斯新闻通讯社援引宇航局官员的评论说：“他们的着陆很成功，现在他们感觉良好。”

拉利伯特是加拿大广受欢迎的“太阳马戏团”的创始人，他身家达亿万，是历史上第七位自费花百万美元前往太空旅游的人。

这名加拿大人于10月2日抵达国际空间站。他可能将成为短期内的最后一位太空游客，因为美国国家航空航天局的几架服役年限较长的航天飞机计划于2010年退役，届时俄罗斯联盟号载人飞船上的席位将会受限。

《福布斯》杂志称，拉利伯特于1984年创建的“太阳马戏团”将杂技与音乐结合了起来。他凭借太阳马戏团在全球富人榜上排第261位，资产达25亿美元。

Vocabulary:

tycoon: a wealthy and powerful businessperson or industrialist; a magnate （企业界的）大亨；巨头

cosmonaut: 和astronaut一样，都是“宇航员”的意思，但是cosmonaut专指被俄罗斯航空及航天局雇佣的宇航员或前苏联的宇航员。

steppe: a vast semiarid grass-covered plain, as found in southeast Europe, Siberia, and central North America（西伯利亚一带没树木的）大草原；干草原

GMT: Greenwich mean time 格林尼治标准时间

fuse:mix（融合；结合）