Russia intends to launch its Zvezda service module for the International Space Station (ISS) on 12 July this year, the Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported on Friday.

The deputy chief designer of the Energiya space corporation, Yuri Grigoryev, said that the service module was due to dock with the ISS on 22 July.

Energiya's press secretary, Sergei Gorbunov, told Russian NTV that it was "100% certain" that Russia would meet an obligation to the US to launch the module by August.

He said the module was waiting at Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and the only technical difficulties were with the Proton booster rocket.

Mr Gorbunov also denied that Russia's plans to revive its own manned space station, Mir, clashed with the ISS project. He said the country's entire space station budget was devoted to the ISS.

"Mir has nothing whatever to do with the ISS programme, because the budget does not assign a single kopeck to Mir. There is not even a single line in the budget about Mir, only about the ISS," he said.

The Mir project was being funded by Energiya's own sponsors, he said, and its aim was to keep Russian space specialists "fighting fit".

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Pathway to desire

A protein known by the unromantic name of DARPP-32 acts as a kind of crossroads of sexual desire in the brain, and may be a key target for future aphrodisiacs, researchers have reported in the journal Science.

Female mice bred to lack the protein, or in whom it does not work, act as if they have no interest in sex, the team from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Rockefeller University in New York and the University of Texas said.

They showed how sex hormones travel along a certain pathway in the brain that merges with a pathway used by dopamine, an important neurotransmitter or message-carrying chemical linked with pleasure.

DARPP-32 seems to be required for any interaction between the two pathways, said cell biologist Shaila Mani of Baylor, who led the study.

"This suggests there's more than one pathway in the brain that affects sexual behaviour," she said. "It also indicates that sexual behaviour is controlled not just by hormones, but also by other signals in the brain."

The researchers do not suggest that the human brain works in just the same way, but said the rats and mice they used could be models for early experiments on ways to increase sexual desire.

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Japan's latest space failure

Japan lost a $105m astronomical satellite after a rocket went awry on Thursday.

The failure triggered a drastic review of the country's disaster-prone space program, officials said.

Television pictures showed the M5 rocket carrying the satellite veering haphazardly 55 seconds after lift-off from Kagoshima Space Centre in Uchinoura, southern Japan.

Graphite on the rocket's nozzle appeared to have fallen off, exposing it to heat damage, said space centre spokesman Toshiaki Takemae.

He said: "Heat leaks from the crack may have damaged attitude control equipment, leading the rocket to swerve off course and release the satellite into a lower orbit than planned.

"We believe the satellite has already re-entered the atmosphere and burned up, but we cannot say where and when," said Mr Takemae.