Malaysia on Monday announced the final two astronaut candidates, a medical officer and a dentist,one of whom will be the first person going to space in the country's history.

The two male candidates are Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, 34, medical officer attached to National University of Malaysia Hospital, and Faiz Khaleed, 26, dentist working with the Malaysian Defence Forces.

This name list, unveiled by Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, also ruled out the possibility of a woman becoming the first ever astronaut in this southeast Asian nation. Earlier, S.Vanajah, 35, a woman engineer, managed to secure a place in the final four.

Sheikh and Faiz will leave for the Yuri Gagarin Aerospace Training Center at Star City in Moscow at the end of this month, where they will undergo one-year professional training.

The final candidate is scheduled to board Russia's space launcher Soyuz 2 to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sept 2. next year.

At the station, he will stay six to eight days to carry out a research and development program, including research on cancer and biotechnology.

The Malaysian National Space Agency started the screening campaign for the program in 2003 and some 11,000 applicants competed for the rare opportunity.

Malaysia's first astronaut program came about following the country's purchase of 18 Sukhoi Su-30MKN fighter jets from Russia worth 1 billion U. S. dollars, local media reports said.

The Russian government, in return, offered one seat for a Malaysian astronaut to join its astronauts in an expedition to the ISS in 2007.

Source: Xinhua