BAIKONUR, September 25. /ITAR-TASS/. A Soyuz TMA-14M manned spaceship with an international crew of a long-duration expedition 41-42 on board is to be launched on the night from September 25 to 26 from Baikonur spaceport for a journey to the International Space Station /ISS/. A spaceport official told ITAR-TASS, "The liftoff of the carrier rocket Soyuz-FG with the spaceship Soyuz TMA-14M from Baikonur's Gagarin Site 1 is scheduled for 20:25 GMT".

The participation of Russian woman cosmonaut Yelena Serova in the space expedition will be a notable feature of the flight. She will be the first Russian space woman to set out on a long space flight after the elapse of 20 years. Her predecessor, Yelena Kondakova, made a five-month orbital flight aboard the Mir space station in 1994.

The spaceship will be piloted by Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Samokutyayev. He and his crew mates Yelena Serova and American astronaut Barry Wilmore when reaching the ISS will join Maksim Surayev, Gregory Wiseman, and Alexander Gerst, who have been workign aboard the ISS since May this year. The new crew will work in orbit for 169 days.

The spaceship TMA-14M is to dock with the ISS after a shortened, six-hour, flight at 02:25 GMT on September 26, mooring at the Russian module Poisk /quest/ /or MIM-2 of the orbital station. One of the advantages of the shortened-flight diagram is that the crew do not have to get adapted to zero gravity in the closed space of the spaceship Soyuz where, besides, it is rather cold.

The condition of weightlessness begins to tell on the human organism in about five hours' time /of the flight/, that is, the cosmonauts will be adapting themselves to zero gravity when aboard the ISS in comfortable conditions. The first manned space flight according to the shortened diagram /the spaceship makes only four orbital revolutions/ was made by the crew of the Soyuz TMA-08M spaceship in March 2013.

When in orbit, the new crew are to perform an extensive programme for scientific studies and applied research and experiments and receive three Russian resupply Progress spacecraft and a European ATV space vehicle. Besides, Samokutyayev together with Maksim Surayev is to take a spacewalk.

The safety of the spaceship along the entire flight path will be ensured by military and civilian aircraft and helicopters as well as a ship of the search-and-rescue service of the Russian Navy in the event of an emergency landing of the Soyuz TMA-14M, said a Federal Space Agency official.