Canadian billionaire space tourist Guy Laliberte has entertained his fellow space travellers with a soap bubble show during their first day in orbit, a Russian space scientist said Thursday.

Laliberte "has brought a special charm to the atmosphere aboard the ship," said Valery Bogomolov, deputy head of the Institute of Medical-Biological Problems, which monitors the health of cosmonauts in orbit.

"Yesterday the cosmonauts, on the initiative of Mr Laliberte, organised some sort of unusual show involving soap bubbles," he added, quoted by the Interfax news agency.

Laliberte, the founder of the popular Cirque du Soleil show, blasted off on Wednesday from the Baikonur space base in Kazakhstan along with US astronaut Jeffrey Williams and Russian cosmonaut Maxim Surayev.

The Soyuz spacecraft carrying the three space travelers is due to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday at 0835 GMT.

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