WORLD IN BRIEF : SOVIET UNION : British Chemist Set for Space Flight

The 27-year-old chemist chosen as Britain’s first space traveler appeared calm on the eve of her blastoff to the Soviet Union’s Mir station. “I have done all the training that was required. I’m ready,” Helen Sharman of Sheffield, England, assured the Soviet space commission after it announced officially that she would be part of the crew with two Soviet cosmonauts. The three will spend eight days aboard the orbiting Mir station. The trip--dubbed Juno--is Moscow’s latest attempt to subsidize its ailing space program by charging foreign passengers million-dollar fees.