OREANDA-NEWS. October 11, 2007. The Soyuz-FG space rocket will launch the Soyuz TMA-11 transport manned spacecraft (TMS) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The crew of the 16th Expedition to the International Space Station (ISS) includes: Soyuz TMA commander, flight engineer of Expedition 16, Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center mission specialist Yuri Malenchenko (Russia), NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson (US) and Malaysian cosmonaut (called angksawan at home), orthopedic surgeon at a university hospital in Kuala Lumpur, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor.

This day will go down in the national history of Malaysia as an equally significant event as the day of 12 April 1961 went down in the history of our country. The Malaysian cosmonaut will perform space flight for the first time. He will be a full-fledged Expedition crew member rather than a tourist.

It is planned that the Malaysian cosmonaut will return to Earth together with the Expedition 15 crew consisting of Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov. NASA astronaut Clayton Andersen will stay on the ISS with Malenchenko and Whitson.

The flight of the Malaysian cosmonaut became a reality owing to a contract between Rosoboronexport and Malaysia for the purchase of 18 Su-30MKM combat planes for the Royal Air Force of this country. Under the contract signed as early as 2003, Rosoboronexport undertook a package of offset commitments, including training and launch to the ISS of a Malaysian cosmonaut.

The Su-30MKM aircraft (MKM stands for “multi-role, commercial, Malaysian”) is the newest version of the widely-known multi-role fighter Su-30MKI, (a large batch of the aircraft was delivered to India in 2002-2004). Successful operating experience with these aircraft in India’s conditions and Rosoboronexport’s unique offset program heavily affected the Malaysian officials’ decision to buy multi-role fighters for the Royal Air Force from Russia, rejecting the American F-18 fighters.

Late in May this year a roll-out of the first two production Su-30MKMs manufactured for the Royal Malaysian Air Force took place at the Irkutsk Aircraft Plant, a major production facility of the Irkut Corporation. The ceremony was attended by representatives of Rosoboronexport officials, Russian enterprises involved in the development and manufacturing of the aircraft, a top-ranking delegation of the Malaysian Ministry of Defense and Royal Air Force as well as Russian and Malaysian journalists.

The Su-30MKM was developed in close cooperation with leading foreign manufacturers of avionics from the United Kingdom, Germany, India, France and South Africa.
The whole avionics integration work was performed with active assistance from a Malaysian Air Force’s project team working in Moscow on a continuing basis.
 
Under Rosoboronexport’s commitments, the major portion of the contract for the Malaysian Air Force will be fulfilled this year. The deliveries will be completed in 2008.

“We constantly use new forms and methods of mutually beneficial cooperation,” Alexei Alyoshin, deputy director general of Rosoboronexport noted on the eve of the launch. “Our Company expands the range of Russian export deliveries, places high emphasis on fulfilling its offset programs, setting up joint ventures, and technology transfer. The offset portion of the Malaysian contract provides for establishing a service center for Russian aircraft in this country and assistance in the implementation of the national space program. We’re sure this expedition will be the beginning of the space era for Malaysia, our strategic partner in the sphere of military-technical cooperation.”

Malaysia is experiencing a real space boom. More than 11,000 people took part in a competition to become candidates for participating in the first national space program. Among the winners who passed extreme survival tests in jungles were four people (see photo). All of them were present at the signing ceremony of the Agreement that took place in spring last year at Rosoboronexport office in Moscow. They were: Malaysian Airlines pilot Faiz bin Kalamuddin Mohammed, orthopedist Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, dentist Faiz bin Khaleed, and woman engineer Siva Subramaniam Vanajah.

All the candidates had undergone examination at the Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center. Two candidates, astronaut researcher Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor and his back-up Faiz bin Khaleed, were selected at the conclusion of medical tests. During a year, they underwent the complete program of space and special training and gained required skills to work on the ISS.
According to available information, aboard the ISS the Malaysian cosmonaut will conduct space experiments in the field of medicine and biology, largely concerning the study of weightlessness effects on molecular and cellular levels. Resistance to drug-induced effect will be studied on healthy and cancerous cells. Detailed research of cell mutation will be completed by specialists already on Earth.

The program also includes a teleconference bridge, which the angkasawan will conduct with his country. For Malaysian schoolboys, he will implement an educational project to demonstrate how weightlessness influences the motion of rotating objects.

Relying on the primary goals of the national space policy, the Rosoboronexport State Corporation actively operates in the sphere of international space cooperation. This is a promising and rapidly growing area of the Company’s activities aimed at meeting the foreign customers’ needs in space systems of various purposes for science and technology development and maintenance of the national security. Among the countries being Rosoboronexport’s partners in military-technical cooperation in the space field are such leading European countries as the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and France. Certainly, the activity on the space service market fosters the strengthening of mutually beneficial partner relations with these countries and contributes to the success of the national space programs.

As director general of Rosoboronexport and Chairman of the Union of Machine Builders of Russia Sergei Chemezov stressed shortly before the launch, “a pledge of Rosoboronexport’s success on the global market for space services and technologies is its long-term cooperation with Russia’s Space Forces, Federal Space Agency and major domestic developers and manufacturers of space hardware, with which we have appropriate cooperation agreements.”