Baikonur (Kazakhstan): US software mogul Charles Simonyi is due to blast off aboard a Russian spaceship on Saturday watched by his friend, lifestyle guru Martha Stewart.
Fifty-eight-year old Simonyi, a billionaire founding father of Microsoft, will depart for the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Soyuz TMA-10 spaceship with Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov at 11:31 pm (1731 GMT).
Stewart has flown to the Soviet-era Baikonur Cosmodrome to watch Simonyi take off from the launch pad used by Yuri Gagarin in 1961 when he became the first man to travel into space.
Simonyi, the world's fifth space tourist, paid $25 million for the 12-day trip.
He is carrying a special dinner packed in an aluminium container that he will share with ISS colleagues on Russia's Cosmonauts Day on April 12.
Stewart chose the menu which features roast quail, duck breast with capers and rice pudding, among other courses. The two Americans have been romantically linked.
Yurchikhin, speaking from behind a glass pane alongside Simonyi, said with a smile about the dinner: "I would like to add the crew regards the wine sauce strictly just as sauce."
In quarantine ahead of the flight, Simonyi looked confident as he spoke to reporters on Friday.
"We don't know what we will find but we have to go and find it," said Simonyi, who will conduct scientific experiments on the ISS. "It's a very rare occasion and we have our duty to help any way we can."
Later in a private last farewell before the launch, Stewart and Simonyi, separated by the glass quarantine panel, exchanged personal words and waved goodbye to one another.
Simonyi was born in Hungary and moved to the United States where he joined a start-up company called Microsoft and made a fortune developing some of its most profitable applications like Word.
Simonyi, who now runs his own company, and the Russian cosmonauts are due to dock with the ISS on Monday.
He spent several months training at a Soviet-era space center near Moscow. He said he had asked other space tourists for tips.
"They gave me a lot of advice -- not to move my head, not to drink too much before the launch," Simonyi said.
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