Space station launch is set

A Russian Soyuz rocket was rolled on to the launch pad at Baikonur today in final preparation for the launch of a three-man crew to the international space station.

It will blast off from the Central Asian steppe on Wednesday night carrying Malaysian Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, Russian Yuri Malenchenko and American Peggy Whitson, the first woman to command the international space station.

Shiekh Shukor will become the first Malaysian in space and has a 12-day mission to the study of the effects of microgravity and space radiation on cells and microbes, as well as experiments with proteins for a potential HIV vaccine.

The mission coincides with the last days of Ramadan, the holy month when Muslims fast from dawn until sundown, but Malaysian clerics decreed that he will be excused from fasting while in space.