A Russian Soyuz spaceship is set to be launched on Monday to send the world's first female space tourist and a two-man crew to the International Space Station (ISS).

Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez- Alegria and Iranian-born American Anousheh Ansari, who will visit the station as a tourist, will man the Soyuz TMA-9 vessel that is scheduled to blast off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 08:09 Moscow time (0409 GMT).

"I was quite surprised by her professionalism. She has easily become part of the crew. One could think we'd been working for years together," Tyurin said of Ansari at a news conference at Baikonur on Sunday, the Interfax news agency reported.

Ansari, 40, who runs a telecommunications company in Texas, will conduct a series of blood and muscular experiments for the European Space Agency during her eight-day stay on the ISS. Previous space tourists reportedly paid about US$20 million each for a ride aboard the Soyuz.

Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria will replace Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and U.S. astronaut Jeffrey Williams, who have been working on the space station since April.

The U.S. space shuttle Atlantis undocked from the ISS on Sunday to make room for the arrival of the Soyuz ship.

(Xinhua News Agency September 18, 2006)