MOSCOW. Feb 8 (Interfax) - Mark Shuttleworth, a future space tourist from South Africa, will insure his flight to the International Space Station in Russia. The insurance contract will be signed at Zvyozdny Gorodok outside Moscow on Friday evening.

The Russian insurance company Megaruss, which has worked on insuring space risks together with Western companies for about 10 years, the Russian aerospace agency Rosaviacosmos told Interfax, has drawn up the insurance program.

Interfax learned from Megaruss that the insurance contract covers the period of Shuttleworth's training in Zvyozdny Gorodok, his stay aboard the ISS, and a rehabilitation period after returning to Earth. Megaruss has not made public the insurance sum. All the risks have been re-insured on the Western market.

As was reported earlier, Shuttleworth, 28, will be part of a Russian-European visiting expedition to the ISS in April 2002, which is to last 8 days. The commander of the expedition will be Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gidzenko, and European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori from Italy will perform flight engineer duties.

The main objective of the expedition is to replace the Soyuz TM-33 rescue craft, whose service life is running out.

Shuttleworth will perform a program of scientific experiments during his trip, Rosaviacosmos said.