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By Chris Baldwin

STAR CITY, Russia (Reuters) - Malaysia's first astronaut said on Thursday his main priority aboard the International Space Station would be cancer research, but he would try to observe as much of Ramadan in orbit as possible.

Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, an orthopaedic surgeon and university lecturer from Kuala Lumpur, will leave Earth on October 10 from Kazakhstan's Baikonur launchpad alongside Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and American astronaut Peggy Whitson.

"Islam is very lenient. If I can't fast in space I can always come back and do it at a later time," Shukor told reporters at a news conference outside Moscow.

Shukor was selected from among 11,000 Malaysian candidates to fly aboard the ISS in a deal his government arranged with Russia as part of a $1 billion (500 million pound) purchase of Russian fighter jets.

He will be the first Malaysian ever and the first Muslim to fly into space during the fasting month of Ramadan, the holiest period of the Islamic calendar, when practicing Muslims abstain from food, drink and sex during daylight hours.

The International Space Station (ISS) will orbit the Earth 16 times every twenty-four hours while Shukor is aboard, though the workday clock will be pegged to Baikonur, two hours ahead of Moscow and two hours behind Kuala Lumpur.

A Saudi prince was the first Muslim in space when he flew aboard the American space shuttle in 1985, and last year space tourist Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-born US citizen, paid $20 million to become the first female Muslim to orbit the Earth.

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