Malaysian Tamil woman short listed to be astronaut

The only woman in contention for the country's maiden astronaut program

Vanajah, a Malaysian Tamil, is the only woman among four people short-listed for her country's maiden astronaut training program. Selected from 11,000 applicants, a rigorous training session in Russia awaits Vanajah. "I have made it this far and I have the mental and physical strength to pull through more stringent tests in Russia," said Vanajah, 35, a quality engineer at Malaysia's National Space Agency.

Vanajah hopes to be further short-listed as one of the two Malaysian astronauts who will undergo advanced training at Russia's Star City. One of these two astronauts will finally be selected to join a Russian mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in October 2007.

The three other people short-listed with Vanajah are Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, a dentist and part-time model, Faiz Khaleed and pilot Mohammed Faiz Kamaluddin. Their selection was announced by Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who said they had been chosen after a battery of mental and physical tests.

Malaysia's space programme is on a route similar to that of India, in that Rakesh Sharma of the Indian Air Force was part of a joint Indo-Russian space mission in 1984. But Malaysia's astronaut training programme, costing 92.9 million ringgit, is to be offset as part of the 3.34-billion ringgit defense deal to buy 18 Sukhoi 30MKN fighter jets from Russia.