US software pioneer Charles Simonyi was to blast off on Thursday with American and Russian astronauts to become the first person in history to travel twice into space as a tourist.

The three were to be launched aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket at 11:49 GMT from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, as Moscow doubles its launches to the International Space Station.

For Simonyi, a programmer who was one of the brains behind Bill Gates' Microsoft, it is the second time he has flown into space as part of Russia's space tourism programme after his first April 2007 voyage.

He has paid $35-million for the privilege, despite no longer being counted as a billionaire in this year's ranking of the world's richest people by the US magazine Forbes.

The professional spacemen aboard the flight are Russian Gennady Padalka, who is to become the space station's commander, and American Michael Barratt, who is to take over as flight engineer.

The head of Russia's space agency Roskosmos, Anatoly Perminov, hailed what he described as a new era in US-Russian space cooperation, echoing the upbeat tone of the countries' leaders following the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

He confirmed that Russia plans to double the number of manned launches to the space station this year to four, with a second one in May, to support an expansion of the station's scientific programme.

"Almost as soon as the Cold War finished it was decided by our countries' political leaderships to carry out great projects together. Now a new era is starting in our cooperation.

"In space cooperation between our countries there will be even more great projects, maybe future flights to asteroids, to other planets, to Mars. Everything is possible. It all depends on the political will of our countries' leaderships," said Perminov.

He noted that two new space laborataries are to begin work at the space station, which orbits at about 350 kilometres above the Earth.

One is Japan's Kibo module, planned for astronomical experiments, and the other is the European Space Agency's Columbus module.

Russia is due to become the main provider of human flights to the space station in the next few years as the United States plans to take its space shuttles out of service and is still working on a replacement.

In Thursday's launch the Soyuz rocket will hurtle into the space at speeds of around 13 400 miles per hour, or 22 000 kilometres per hour. Baikonur was the site of the first ever human space flight, by Yury Gagarin in 1961.

However it takes two days on the journey to the space station due to the need to ensure smooth docking and efficient use of fuel.

Perminov said it could be the last or penultimate time a space tourist will fly to the space station for a while due to increasing demands on the programme.

"This is the last or maybe penultimate tourist probably. For a while there'll be a break," he said.