A veteran US astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts blasted off late Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, bound for the orbiting International Space Station (ISS), Russian space authorities said, dpa reported.
Russians Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripotschka and American Scott Kelly were aboard the Soyuz spacecraft and are due to spend five months on the space station. Numerous scientific experiments are scheduled during their time in orbit.
The Soyuz capsule, flying for the first time with digital navigation technology, is scheduled to dock on Sunday with the ISS.