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

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."