Russia launched a spaceship from the Baikonur cosmodrome on Saturday morning to send the eighth expedition to the International Space Station (ISS).

Aboard the Soyuz TMA-3, which took off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, are Alexander Kaleri from Russia, NASA astronaut Michael Foale and Spanish Pedro Duque from the European Space Agency (ESA).

Kaleri and Foale will stay on board the 16-nation space outpost for 200 days, while Duque will spend 10 days in orbit.

The new trio team will conduct over 20 experiments and make a series of space walks.

Next ISS crew ready for flight in space

The eighth expedition for the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled to fly and work on Saturday aboard a Russian spaceship, Itar-Tass reported.

The Soyuz TMA-3 will take to the space outpost a three-member crew: Alexander Kaleri from Russia, NASA astronaut Michael Foale and Spanish Pedro Duque from the European Space Agency (ESA).

The Russian State Commission made the final decision on Friday to send for the first time trio flight engineers instead of military pilots to serve at the space station.

Kaleri and Foale will stay on board the ISS for 200 days, Duque will spend 10 days in orbit and return to the Earth late in October together with the current crew of Yuri Malenchenko and Edward Lu, who have been working on the ISS since April.

The new trio will conduct over 20 experiments and make a series of space walks.

The back-up crew, comprising Valery Tokarev, William MacArthur and ESA astronaut Andre Kuipers from Holland, is expected to fly to the ISS on April 2004, according to the Russian Space Agency.

Kaleri, 47, has a professional education background on space sciences and technologies. Appointed as the commander of the forthcoming flight, he is especially renowned for his working record including three space missions, whose total length is 415 days, and 20 hours working in outer space.

Foale, 46, a Doctor of Astrophysics, has spent in orbit 168 days and made three space walkouts with a total length of 19 hours during his past five space missions.

Selected from some 700 Spanish contenders for the group of ESA astronauts, 40-year-old Duque will kick off his second space mission on Saturday. He made his first nine-day-long space flight in October 1998 on board the Discovery shuttle together with five Americans.

A senior Russian space official announced Friday that the country plans to launch two manned Soyuz spacecraft and five Progress re-supply ships to the ISS next year, Interfax reported.

The launch of the two Soyuz is aimed to serve both as rescue vehicles for evacuating the crew from the station to the earth at any time, and rotate the outgoing crew once every six months, said Deputy head of the Russian Space Agency Nikolai Moiseyev at the Baikonur cosmodrome.

Moiseyev said both the two manned and five unmanned flights are necessary, even though the European Automated Transfer Vehicle should be ready, and the first US shuttle flight since the Columbia crash is expected next October.

Following the Columbia disaster in February, Russian spacecraft that currently conducts the tasks of delivering new missions and cargoes to the ISS, became the only links to the US$60 billion orbiting space hub.

(Xinhua News Agency October 18, 2003)