BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan, Oct 14 (AFP) - A Russian-US crew blasted off from here Thursday bound for the International Space Station where they will spend six months conducting experiments including work on the search for an AIDS vaccine.
The crew comprising Russian cosmonauts Salizhan Sharipov and Yuri Shargin and US astronaut Leroy Chiao lifted off aboard a Russian Soyuz TMA-5 rocket and entered earth orbit without incident, mission control officials said.
Sharipov and Chiao will replace Russia's Gennady Padalka and American Michael Fincke who have been living aboard the ISS since April. The new team will remain aboard the vessel until April of next year.
Shargin is scheduled to accompany the departing crew back to earth next week following the docking with the Soyuz vessel, due to take place Saturday, and the change of crews.
The Soyuz rocket left the launch pad with a thunderous roar in burgeoning clouds of exhaust in a spectacular liftoff that was greeted with applause by Russian and US space officials watching from an observation point in the space center.
After separating from its three booster stages, the Soyuz capsule was placed into orbit just 10 minutes after leaving the launch pad here, officials said.
"The launch took place as planned," Vyacheslav Davidenko, spokesman for the Russian space agency Roskosmos, told AFP.
The new crew are to conduct 41 separate scientific, medical, biological and technical experiments, including one focusing on research for a vaccination against the virus that causes AIDS, space officials said.
The new two-man crew, who have trained together for the past several months at the Star City facility outside Moscow, are also scheduled to make two spacewalks, one in December and one in February, while aboard the ISS.
Those space walks are to be used for preparing the ISS for the planned docking next year of the new European ATV space cargo vessel.
Although the launch Thursday went off without a hitch, it was preceded by some complications that resulted twice in postponement of the start of the mission, originally programmed for October 9.
Chiao and Sharipov will be the 10th long-term crew aboard the ISS since the launch of its first module on November 20, 1998. There were no Europeans or space tourists involved in the current mission.
Fred Gregory, deputy administrator of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) who attended Thursday's launch, described space cooperation between Russia and the United States was "very successful."
"It has maintained our presence on the space station just as we had hoped," Gregory told reporters here.
All crews travelling to and from the ISS do so at present aboard Russian craft vessels as the US space shuttle fleet remains grounded following the disintegration on reentry of the shuttle Columbia in February 2003.
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