A Russian spaceship with three astronauts aboard blasted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, the Mission Control Center outside Moscow said.
Live broadcast from Russian television showed the Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft successfully lifted off at 14:34 p.m. Moscow time (1034 GMT) from the Baikonur space center.
It is scheduled to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) at 16:16 p.m. Moscow time (1216 GMT) on Friday.
On board the capsule are Roman Romanenko, Franc De Winne and Robert Thirsk, the crew of the 20th ISS expedition, who respectively come from Russia, Belgium and Canada.
Once the three astronauts reach the space station, the number of ISS permanent crew members will have for the first time increased to six.
Currently, there are three astronauts at the ISS, namely, American Michael Barratt, Japanese Koichi Wakata and Russian Gennady Padalka.
It will be the first time for all the five partners of the ISS -- Russia, the European Space Agency (ESA), Japan, the United States and Canada -- to work at the space station orbiting 350 km above the earth together.
It is reported that the new expedition crew will live at the ISS for six months, and conduct docking missions between the ISS and several spacecrafts, including U.S. space shuttles, Russia's Progress spaceship and Japan's first cargo spacecraft HTV.
Some scientific experiments will be carried out, too, along with one space walk.
Additionally, the Russian astronauts will complete the docking between Russian small research module and the ISS, which will enable Russia to conduct much more experiments in space.
(Xinhua News Agency May 27, 2009)