Next space station crew to launch

[Talon]

Next space station crew to launch

Expedition 10, the next crew to live on the International Space Station (ISS), is set to launch from Kazakhstan.

US astronaut Leroy Chiao and Russian cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov will leave the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Soyuz rocket at 0306GMT on Thursday.

It will take them until Friday to reach the orbiting platform, where they will work on handover tasks with the outgoing Expedition 9 crew for 10 days.

Chiao and Sharipov will then be left alone on the ISS for six months.

The pair will be accompanied on their trip into space by a third person, cosmonaut Yuri Shargin. But Shargin will only stay on the platform for the period of the handover and will return to Earth alongside Expedition 9 - Gennady Padalka and Mike Fincke.

The new US-Russian space crew were in jovial mood on Wednesday when they gave their last media conference before blast-off.

Technical problems have twice led to their launch date being put back.

"Salizhan is a kind and flexible person, and he has become a real friend of mine," Chiao was quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency.

"To spend six months with him aboard the station will be a real pleasure," he said in fluent Russian.

"Leroy is a man I would take on a risky mission behind enemy lines," Sharipov quipped.

Since the Columbia shuttle disaster in February 2003, Russian Soyuz craft have been the only means of getting crews to and from the ISS.

The latest estimate of when the US orbiters might return to flight is May next year at the earliest.

Construction on the multi-billion-dollar platform is on hold until the shuttles are brought back into service and can carry up new components for the station

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/3740298.stm