Marcos C. Pontes beamed as
he described his excitement on the eve of Thursday's scheduled launch (local time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome
for a mission to the International Space Station. Marcos said he felt a deep
responsibility to carry out the mission well, and wanted to take along things
important to his Latin American nation.
"I am taking the Brazilian
flag - the most important thing that I am taking," he said. "Actually, I am
going with the flag, not the flag going with me."
Engineers rolled the
Soyuz-TMA 8 out to
the launch pad on the Central Asian steppe on Tuesday as they went through
final checks ahead of the mission
that will carry Pontes, Russian Pavel Vinogradov and American Jeffrey Williams
into space. The mission will include experiments designed to see how humans
react to prolonged space travel.
Pontes will stay on the space
station for nine days and will return with the current
Russian-U.S. crew on board the space station. Vinogradov and Williams will
stay on board for about six months.
Vinogradov, who is the
commander of the crew, said they will carry out over 65 scientific experiments
during the mission.
The American space program
has depended
on the Russians for cargo and astronaut delivery to the space station since
the 2003 shuttle disaster.
The shuttle Discovery visited the station in July 2005 but had problems with
its foam insulation on its external fuel tank. It is expected to fly to the
station in
July.
The mission marks an
important moment for Pontes, who began training in 1998 in the United States
and was scheduled to fly to the space station aboard a U.S. space shuttle.
Those plans were scrapped after the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space
Administration suspended shuttle flights following the 2003 Columbia explosion.
After the disaster, Brazil
opened talks with Russia about having him blast
off on a Russian rocket. During a November 2004 visit to Brazil, Russian
President Vladimir Putin also agreed that Russia would help Brazil resume its space
program and restore its launch base, which was destroyed by a 2003
rocket explosion that killed
21 people.
In addition to the flag,
Pontes said that he would take up a jersey for his soccer-mad nation, which has
won the quadrennial international championship five times. With optimism, he
predicted it would honor the "six-time champions of the world, the Brazilian
football team."
The next World Cup finals
take place in Germany later this year.
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