A leading US programmer who helped develop Microsoft programmes has signed up for a mission to space in 2007, the Russian space agency said Monday. "A preliminary contract with (Charles) Simonyi was signed for spring 2007," Alexei Krasnov, an official from Roskosmos, was quoted by RIA-Novosti news agency as saying.
Three millionaires have already taken self-funded rides as space tourists: Greg Olsen and Dennis Tito from the United States and Mark Shuttleworth from South Africa.
Daisuke Enomoto, a wealthy Japanese Internet entrepreneur, is set to blast off from a Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan later this year for his 20-million-dollar trip to the International Space Station (ISS).
Simonyi, who was born in Hungary, joined Microsoft in 1981 and helped develop the company's popular Word and Excel programmes.
In 2002, Forbes magazine ranked him the 445th richest person in the world with a net worth of one billion dollars (824.1 million euros).
