The Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz TMA-19M space ship carrying a new crew to the International Space Station, ISS, flies in the sky at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2015. The Russian rocket carries British astronaut Tim Peake, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and U.S. astronaut Tim Kopra. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)
A Russian spacecraft carrying three astronauts from the United States, Britain and Russia docked successfully Tuesday at the International Space Station.
NASA’s live broadcast from the Russian Mission Control showed the Soyuz spacecraft mooring at the space outpost at 8:33 p.m. Moscow time (1733 GMT) about 6 ½ hours after lifting off from the Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan.
The Soyuz TMA-19 M was carrying Russian Yuri Malenchenko, Timothy Kopra of NASA and Briton Timothy Peake, representing the European Space Agency.
After an automatic docking was aborted for an unspecified reason, Malenchenko moved the ship back a bit to assess its systems and then performed a neat docking on manual controls.
Peake, a 43-year-old former army helicopter pilot, is the first Briton to visit the International Space Station.
The trio will spend six months aboard the space outpost. Already aboard are Russians Sergey Volkov and Mikhail Korniyenko, along with American Scott Kelly. The latter two have been on the orbiting space station since March and are on a yearlong mission.
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