"The docking was carried out in the manual regime due to a glitch in the automated guidance system. The commander of the spacecraft had to take over controls and the docking was completed without any further problems," Alexander Ivanov, interim head of Roscosmos, told reporters at the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan.
The new crew members are Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, US NASA astronaut Timothy Kopra, and European Space Agency astronaut Timothy Peake.
Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Korniyenko and Sergey Volkov, as well as NASA's astronaut Scott Kelly are currently on board the ISS.
The Soyuz spacecraft was launched atop a Soyuz-FG carrier rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 14:03 Moscow time (11:03 GMT) on Tuesday.
The spacecraft carried the new Expedition 46/47 of a Russian cosmonaut, a US and a European astronaut onto the International Space Station (ISS).
Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko conducted the manual docking to the ISS’ Rassvet module at 17:33 GMT. NASA flight engineer Timothy Kopra and European Space Agency engineer Timothy Peake, the first British astronaut, accompany Malenchenko as part of the new expedition.
Preparations are underway for hatches to open at 19:00 GMT and the three crew members to replace Sergey Vokov, Mikhail Korniyenko and Scott Kelly for a six-month mission.