The new crew of the International Space Station (ISS) made a successful launch Thursday aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan, flight controllers said. "Russians Salizhan Sharipov and Yury Shargin and American Leroy Chiao are well," said an ISS spokesman after the Soyuz TMA-5 craft blasted off at 0306 GMT and went into the designated orbit. The three men are due to dock with the orbiter early Saturday and relieve Gennady Padalka and Michael Fincke, who have been on the station since April. Supplies aboard the Soyuz include a new running machine to help maintain crew members' muscular strength in conditions of weightlessness. NASA astronaut Chiao and Sharipov of Russia's federal space agency will spend six months on the ISS. Shargin, the first officer of Russia's military space rocket forces to visit the station, will conduct a short programme of scientific experiments before returning to Earth with the outgoing crew on October 24. The new occupants are scheduled to make two space walks outside the orbiter during their flight. On the second they will install an antenna and camera that will later be used to dock the new European ATV cargo craft. They also have a heavy science workload as well as daily maintenance duties on the ISS, a 16-nation project that has been under construction in orbit since 1998. Russian ground controllers said Thursday they calculated the station's current weight as 181.6 tons during an operation in August to boost its orbit height using a docked cargo freighter.
