The world's first female 

The Russian-made Soyuz rocket left the Russian base in Kazakhstan at 0408 GMT carrying a Soyuz TMA-9 capsule and its three passengers: Iranian-born US citizen and millionaire tourist Anousheh Ansari, NASA's Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin.

The capsule successfully separated minutes later and entered orbit, with docking at the ISS expected Wednesday.

"The flight is on course," ground control announced as the Soyuz, powered by 270 tonnes of low-temperature oxygen and kerosene fuel, left Earth.

Ansari, 40, will spend about eight days aboard the ISS before returning to Earth on September 28 with two of the station's current occupants, Russia's Pavel Vinogradov and American Jeffrey Williams.

Lopez-Alegria and engineer Tyurin will then man the ISS along with Germany's Thomas Reiter, who has been in space since early July.

Ansari's family shed tears of joy as the Soyuz rocket shot above the Kazakh steppe.

Then came the champagne.

"Pure joy! I'm just so happy for her -- beyond words," Ansari's sister Atousa Raissyan said.

Ansari's mother, Fakhri Shahidi, watched the craft leap skyward in amazement. "It's hard to believe my daughter is going to space," she said. "I pray with all my heart she's coming back soon."

Ansari, who came to the United States with her parents from Iran when she was 16, made a fortune in the US telecoms market and had dreamt for years of going into orbit. Her X PRIZE Foundation promotes making space more accessible to the wider public.

She is believed to have paid some 25 million dollars (20 million euros) and trained for six months in Russia's Star City facility in order to become the fourth space tourist in history.

"I feel relieved she's up there," her husband Hamid Ansari said after the blast-off. "The anticipation is over. It's the beginning of a new chapter in her life. I can't wait to see her come back."

Soyuz rockets became the main workhorses taking people to the ISS after the grounding of the US space shuttle fleet in 2003, an interruption that ended with the successful launch of the shuttle Atlantis last weekend.

In case of mishap, Russian air and naval forces were patrolling near the rocket's launch path over Kazakhstan, Siberia and the Sea of Japan.

Russia rents the Baikonur launch site from the Kazakh authorities.

Launches from the cosmodrome are accompanied by a cherished series of good-luck rituals, some of them dating back to the 1960s and the glory years of Soviet space exploration.

On their last evening before entering space, Ansari and her two professional crewmates watched the classic Soviet movie "White Sun of the Desert," something every crew has done since the film gained a reputation for bringing luck in the wake of the June 1971 Soyuz 11 accident that killed three cosmomnauts.

Since then, there have been no fatal accidents.

Before departing, the three space travelers also took a moment to autograph the doors of their room -- echoing the last-minute gesture of Yuri Gagarin, who in 1961 took off from Baikonur to become the first man in space.

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