The Chinese news agency Xinhua reported the Soyuz was delivered to the launch site and raised to a vertical position at the launch site Saturday despite inclement weather.

The Soyuz TMA-21 will rocket three crew members -- U.S. astronaut Ron Garan, and Russian cosmonauts Aleksander Samokutyaev and Andrei Borisenko -- to the International Space Station, Britain's Daily Mail reported. They will spend six months carrying out 40 experiments, Xinhua said.

Tuesday's launch will be dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the first flight into space on April 12, 1961, by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who died in a training jet crash in 1968.

The launch, which will be the 109th flight by a Soyuz spacecraft since 1967, was originally was to have been this past Wednesday but it was delayed while a communication problem was resolved.

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