A Russian Soyuz spacecraft has blasted off carrying a woman set to notch up three space records: the first female tourist, first female Muslim, and first Iranian in orbit.
Anousheh Ansari, 40, an Iranian-American telecommunications entrepreneur, has joined a Russian cosmonaut and US astronaut in the cramped interior of Soyuz TMA-9 for a flight to the International Space Station (ISS).
The Soviet-designed spacecraft lifted off into a clear blue sky at 2:00pm AEST from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
"The flight is normal, the crew feel fine," a flight controller at Mission Control near Moscow said.
Unlike American Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russian Mikhail Tyurin, who are starting a six-month stint in space, Ms Ansari will return to earth in 10 days with the outgoing US-Russian crew.
Ms Ansari, a US citizen who left Iran in 1984, has said she wants to be an example to her compatriots.
"I think my flight has become a sort of ray of hope for young Iranians living in Iran, helping them to look forward to something positive," she said.
"Everything they've been hearing is all so very depressing and talks of war and talks of bloodshed."
Flag ban
She has been told, however, to remove an Iranian flag from her spacesuit.
At the insistence of the Russian and US governments, Ms Ansari has also promised that there will be no political messages during her trip.
But before the flight, Ms Ansari said she would still pack another Iranian flag for her trip.
The United States and Iran have not had formal diplomatic relations since students took 52 Americans hostage at the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.
US President George W Bush has called the Islamic Republic part of an "axis of evil".
Ms Ansari has not said how much her ticket cost but previous space tourists have paid the Russian space program about $US20 million.
She had originally been scheduled to join a later Soyuz mission but took the place of Japanese businessman Daisuke Enomoto, who was not able to fly for unspecified medical reasons.
Several hours before the Soyuz blast-off, the US space Shuttle Atlantis undocked from the ISS.
The Soyuz craft will dock with the space station early on Wednesday.
Atlantis is scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida a few hours later.
