科技英语新闻:Russia says new ISS crew ready for blast off

MOSCOW, March 11 (Xinhua) -- A new crew which are to depart for the International Space Station (ISS) at the end of March have successfully passed the pre-flight tests, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) announced on Friday.

At a press conference held at Russia's Cosmonauts Training Center, a Roscosmos spokesman said two Russian cosmonauts Andrei Borisenko and Alexander Samokutyaev and a U.S. astronaut Ronald Garn will leave for the ISS by a Russian Soyuz-TM-21 spacecraft on March 30.

On March 17, the three crew members and their backup crew members, Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoly Ivanishin and Daniel Burbank, will make their final preparation for the space trip in the Baikonur space site in Kazakhstan.

According to the Roscosmos, the three main crew members are expected to spend 170 days in the ISS. During the period, they will receive two U.S. space shuttles and three Russian Progress cargo ships and conduct a spacewalk.

The agency also revealed the Soyuz-TM-21 spacecraft scheduled for the ISS was named as Gagarin.

The year of 2011 was announced as Russia's Space Year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the launch of the first Russian manned space flight carrying cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961 for a 90-minute flight.