Shuttleworth, 28, is to blast off on April 25 in a Soyuz capsule with Russian commander Yury Gidzenko and Italian engineer Roberto Vittori.

"I'm feeling very relaxed. We're all set to go down to Kazhakstan and prepare the rocket for launch," he told SABC radio in an interview from Moscow.

Shuttleworth said he had planned to be a crew member rather than just a tourist from the start.

"I wanted to train as a crew member, instead of just riding up there as a passenger. I wanted to do all the things space agencies do, which is run experiments and build an education campaign around the space project itself," he said.

Shuttleworth said he planned to do research on HIV proteins as part of an African focus on science.

"The Port Elizabeth University (on South Africa's southeast coast) have asked us to take some proteins of the HIV virus and cells of the human immune system to try to produce crystals in space of those proteins," he said.

"Hopefully this will help scientists to understand the role of those proteins and will help them to come up with the drugs that will interfere with HIV's attack on the human immune system," Shuttleworth said.

In 2001, 2.3 million Africans died of HIV/AIDS, said Stephen Lewis, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's special representative for AIDS in Africa, while on an official visit to Ethiopia last month.

South Africa has the world's greatest number of HIV-poisitive citizens -- around 4.7 million -- and some 70,000 babies are born with the virus every year.

Shuttleworth will also study the development of rat and ewe stem cells -- cells that have the ability to divide for indefinite periods in culture and to give rise to specialized cells -- in microgravity.

Like the first space tourist, 60-year-old American Dennis Tito, who made his trip last April, Shuttleworth is paying some 20 million dollarsmillion euros) for the experience of a lifetime.

But unlike Tito, whose presence on the ISS caused a major row with US space agency NASA, the South African will be able to walk freely around the space station, including the American segment, according to Russian officials.

US teen pop idol Lance Bass from boys band 'N Sync is hoping to become the world's first entertainer to fly to space. He is looking to follow in Tito's and Shuttleworth's footsteps and visit the ISS in October.

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