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Written by Derek Kessler on
Wednesday, 10 October 2007
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 A Russian Soyuz-FG rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying two crewmembers for the upcoming Expedition 16 International Space Station crew. Onboard was American astronaut Peggy Whitson, destined to be the station's first female commander, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, and Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, a physician and Malaysia's first astronaut.
While Sheikh Muszaphar is not the first Muslim in space (that distinction goes to Saudi Prince Sultan bin Salman who was on the crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1985), he is the first to fly during the holy month of Ramadan. During Ramadan, Muslims traditionally fast from dawn to dusk, though clerics in Malaysia have told Sheikh Muszaphar that he does not have to fast until he returns to Earth. Regardless, he has decided that he will fast anyway, and has brought along vacuum-packed Malaysian food to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, which will occur this weekend while he is in orbit. On Tuesday, he told reporters at Baikonur that his trip will be an inspiration for his southeast Asian nation as well as to other Muslims all over the world.
Sheikh Muszaphar will only stay on the station for ten days, conducting experiments involving disease and the effects of microgravity and stellar radiation. Whitson and Malenchenko will stay on board, replacing the current crew - cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov - as Expedition 16. They will be joining US astronaut Clayton Anderson, who has been on the ISS since June. He will be replaced next month by Daniel Tani, who will be coming up with the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Expedition 16 will perform two spacewalks to prepare the ISS for the addition of new components to be delivered by Discovery. Their work will help expand the station's capacity from the current three crewmen to six permanent residents, starting in 2009.
With the difficulties that NASA has experienced with the Space Shuttle since the loss of Columbia in 2003, the ISS has grown increasingly dependent upon Russia's Soyuz spacecraft for deliveries of cargo and crew. While the Soyuz system was designed nearly fifty years ago, it has undergone several revisions, turning it into the cheap and efficient craft that it is today. Soyuz will become even more critical to the ISS after 2010, when NASA is slated to retire the space shuttle fleet. With its replacement - the Orion spacecraft - not due until 2014. Until then, Soyuz will be the only physical link between Earth and the ISS.
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