MOSCOW, AUG 6: A Soyuz TN-26 rocket carrying a new team of Russian cosmonauts to replace two of the three members in the beleagured Mir space station, blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome on Tuesday evening.

The Soyuz rocket with a capsule carrying cosmonauts Anatoly Sovolev and Pavel Vinogradov took off on schedule and is expected to dock with Mir on Thursday.

The new crew will carry out repairs on the Mir station which has been plagued by a number of problems since one of its modules Specktr was damaged by the Russian cargo ship progress on June 25 during a practice docking. The 120-tonne Mir space station was put in orbit on April 20,1986.

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