A Russian-U.S. crew will blast off from here Thursday bound for the orbiting international space station on a six-month mission to conduct a series of scientific experiments
Published:
15 October 2004 y., Friday
The Soyuz TMA-5 spacecraft will carry Leroy Chiao of the United States and Russia's Salizhan Sharipov and Yury Shargin to replace Gennady Padalka, from Russia, and American Michael Fincke who have been in orbit since April.
While Chiao and Sharipov will remain on the space station until April 2005 as the 10th crew since the historic launch of the first module in 1998, Shargin will spend only 10 days in orbit during the relief of the crews.
The cosmonauts, after training for several months at the Star City near Moscow, are due to carry out 41 scientific, medical, biological and technical experiments.
One experiment is to study proteins that could be used to create a vaccine against AIDS, Sharipov said.
During the mission, the crew is scheduled to leave the station twice, once in December and once in January, to continue preparations for the docking of a new European cargo spacecraft scheduled for next year. The mission of Shargin -- an officer in the Russian defense ministry -- on the ISS space station was described by the commander of Russia's space forces in July as "an interesting program that will be useful to the space forces and to the whole country."
Šaltinis:
tehrantimes.com
Copying, publishing, announcing any information from the News.lt portal without written permission of News.lt editorial office is prohibited.
The most popular articles
The European Commission announced today the award of three of the six contracts for the procurement of Galileo’s initial operational capability.
more »
Three Tallinn higher educational institutions considering merger
more »
The Cabinet of Ministers today directed the Ministry for Finance to allocate LVL 2.88 million from the national budget to increase teacher salaries as of Sept. 1.
more »
The Ministry of Education has decided to terminate the services of 2,000 expatriate teachers at the beginning of the new school year and replace them with Saudi nationals.
more »
The rising cost of college tuition has many parents wondering how they will pay
more »
A cooperation agreement was signed with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) at the British Embassy in Riga today for a donation of GBP 50,000 to the National Latvian Language Training Program.
more »
Student-oriented Web sites are making the grade.
more »
Latvian youth, according to a report by UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre in Italy, are increasingly viewing education as a key to a better future.
more »
Estonian Parliament on Dec. 13 passed a state pension insurance bill that foresees indexation of pensions
more »
Eighth-grade students in Latvia's native-language schools performed about as well as American students in a recent study of mathematics and science achievement.
more »
Training choices and e-learning
more »