KAZAKH LEADS SPACE MISSION FROM BAIKONUR.

Spacecraft Soyuz TM-27, which was launched on January 29 from Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan, is due to spend 194 days in orbit with the Russian space station Mir. The commander of this, the twenty-fifth international expedition to Mir, is for the first time a Kazakh, Talgat Musabaev. According to the president of Kazakhstan’s National Academy of Sciences, Vladimir Shkolnik, Musabaev will conduct the first space research program for Kazakhstan in environmental monitoring, geophysics, space biotechnology and biology. Meanwhile the functional cargo block, the first element of the future international space station, has been delivered to Baikonur from where it will be placed into orbit in June. (Russian Agencies, February 3 and 8) ___________________________________________________________________________________________

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