American space tourist Richard Garriott docked at the International Space Station on Tuesday this past week - "I can fly," Garriott junior told his father and friends at Russia's Mission Control Center, outside Moscow, via video link.

Garriott is paying $30 million for a 10-day trek to the space station under a deal between Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and the Vienna, Va.-based firm Space Adventures.

A computer video game pioneer and the world's sixth paying visitor to the station, he is the son of former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott. 

He is not in space simply for the experience and adventure. He has packed his private spaceflight with a host of science experiments and educational outreach projects. He has about 500 targets to photograph on Earth, many of them identical to those observed by his father.