The launch occurred at 7:28 p.m. Moscow time (16:28 GMT) on Saturday. After liftoff from the launchpad in Kazakhstan the spaceship entered orbit in approximately nine minutes.
The capsule, with three crew members - Alexander Skvortsov of Russia, Luca Parmitano of Italy, and Andrew Morgan of the United States - will dock with the ISS in several hours, after making four Earth orbits.
Expedition 60 to the International Space Station (ISS) will join other astronauts at the ISS - Russia's Aleksey Ovchininm and NASA's Christina Koch and Nick Hague. Ovchinin, Hague and Koch have been aboard the ISS since March.
The Expedition 60 mission to the ISS is expected to end on 3 October 2019, when a Soyuz capsule with Ovchinin and Hague will undock and Koch, Skvortsov, Parmitano, and Morgan will be transferred to Expedition 61.
The Saturday launch occurred on the 50th anniversary of the humanity's first manned mission to land on the lunar surface. The historic touchdown of the Apollo 11 took place on 20 July 1969. Between 1969 and 1972, the United States carried out six crewed landings on the Moon.
Through the Soviet Union was the first country to send a human-made object to the Moon, which happened on 13 September 1959, its manned lunar program was canceled after several major rocket failures between 1969 and 1972.
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