MOSCOW, April 4 (Interfax) -- The first space tourist, Dennis Tito, who will join the Russian crew of a Soyuz TM spacecraft, will go through comprehensive tests on April 9 and 10 at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center as part of the program for a flight to the International Space Station (ISS).

The Dennis Tito Story

Russians Refuse NASA Training Without Tito An international incident cropped up at Johnson Space Center Monday when Russian cosmonauts headed for the ISS in April refused to begin training after fellow crewman Dennis Tito was excluded from the exercises.

Space Station Crew Will Welcome Any Visitors - Even Tito The crew of the ISS says U.S. millionaire Dennis Tito welcome.

Cosmonauts Told to Resume Training, Station's First Skipper Comments New marching orders to cooperate and resume work are on their way this morning from Moscow to the Russian cosmonauts in Houston who staged a Texas standoff with NASA officials on Monday.

Tito will be launched April 28, along with commander Talgat Musabaev and flight engineer Yuri Baturin from the Baikonur Cosmodrome for a weeklong flight to the ISS.

Vasily Tsibliyev, who is deputy chief of the space training section at the Gagarin center, has told Interfax that Tito, 60, has prepared himself well for the flight, is physically fit and quite an asset to the crew. However, Tsibliyev said, Tito's flight has not yet been finalized with NASA. But Tsibliyev said he is sure this is purely a political problem that will be resolved within days, since there is little time left before launch.

The Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Rosaviacosmos) told Interfax that NASA specialists have accepted as adequate Tito's ability to pay a short-term visit to the Russian segment of the ISS.

However, they believe he is not ready for work according to the rigorous ISS schedule, and for this reason they will not discuss the possibility of his taking part in any full-fledged scientific and technical activity on the station.

The Russian agency said working groups from Rosaviacosmos, NASA and the European Space Agency in March negotiated the medical and technical requirements, as well as the training methods for such commercial flights to the ISS by non-professional astronauts.

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Tito graduated from an aerospace university in the U.S. and for five years worked for NASA's Mariner program which sent unmanned probes to Mars and Venus.

Subsequently, Tito formed his own company -- with one of its business lines involving the application of space technologies. Initially, the financier planned to fly with a Russian crew to the Mir space station, which was deorbited in March.