A relatively inexperienced crew of two astronauts and a cosmonaut blasted off Wednesday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a five-month mission on the International Space Station.
German Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency, NASA's Serena Aunon-Chancellor and Russian Sergei Prokopyev of Roscosmos shot into the sky in warm, dry conditions at 1112 GMT.
They should dock at the space station on Friday.
Prokopyev, 43, will serve as the crew's flight commander for the two-day journey to the orbital lab despite having never flown into space before.
The trio which will spend 5 months on the station, only has one previous mission between them.
Aunon-Chancellor, 42, who followed her father into engineering before training to be an astronaut and is also a practising doctor, was only confirmed by NASA for the mission at the beginning of the year.
NASA did not explain the change.
"L-6 hours. On our way to the suit-up building. Got a great farewell from our friends and families. Crew is doing great. Looking at unimpressed camels on the side of the road. #horizons," he tweeted.
According to ESA, Gerst will be only the second person from the agency to take command of the lab in the 17 years crews have occupied the station. Belgian Frank De Winne took charge of the station during a mission in 2009.
Moreover, Prokopyev said at the pre-launch press-conference that the ISS crew would stage their own football match on the day of the final on July 15.
Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov returned to Earth on Sunday with an official football that he kicked around on the ISS and which may be used during a match, Russian news agencies have reported.
Space research has been one of the few areas of international cooperation between Russia and the West that has not been wrecked by the Ukraine crisis.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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