A small Russian research module (MIM-2) will be blasted off to the International Space Station (ISS) by the end of this year, said the state secretary of the Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) Vitaly Davydov on Sunday.

When communicating with the ISS on Sunday, the annual Cosmonautics Day of Russia, Davydov said that the Roskosmos leadership had recently visited the Energia Space Corporation and discussed the preparation for the module launch, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

MIM-2, planned to be fired off in November, is a multifunctional module used for docking Russian Soyuz and Progress spaceships to the ISS, said Davydov. It will also partially function as the Russian service module Zvezda (Star).

Another function of MIM-2 is to serve as a passage for cosmonauts to step out of the station, he said. The module can hold cargoes and equipment of up to 870 kg in its 3 cubic meters of space.

Russia celebrates April 12 every year as the Cosmonauts Day to commemorate the first-ever successful flight in space by a human on April 12, 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth.

(Xinhua News Agency April 13, 2009)