BAIKONUR (Sputnik) – The spacecraft with Russian cosmonauts Alexei (Aleksey) Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka and NASA’s Jeff Williams blasted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan atop the Soyuz-FG carrier rocket at 00:26 Moscow time on Saturday (21:26 GMT on Friday).
Minutes later, the spacecraft separated from the third stage of the carrier rocket. It is expected to dock with the ISS six hours after the launch.
The new ISS crewmembers will join Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, NASA (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration) astronaut Timothy Kopra and ESA’s (European Space Agency) Timothy Peake who have been on board the ISS since March 1. The new crewmembers are expected to stay at the space station for 173 days.
