A Russian-American crew of three has blasted off to the International Space Station, making a second attempt to reach the outpost after October’s aborted launch.
A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying Nasa astronauts Nick Hague and Christina Koch along with Roscosmos’s Alexey Ovchinin, lifted off as planned from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 12.14 am Friday (1914 GMT Thursday).
Welcome to space! With a jolt, @AstroHague, @Astro_Christina and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin have entered microgravity. Watch their journey to @Space_Station continue: https://t.co/sMdhJOnzA3. Ask questions using #AskNASA pic.twitter.com/IoFIVK34kK
— NASA (@NASA) March 14, 2019
They are set to dock at the space station in about six hours.
On October 11 a Soyuz that Hague and Ovchinin were travelling in failed two minutes into its flight, activating a rescue system that allowed their capsule to land safely.
That accident was the first aborted crew launch for the Russian space programme since 1983, when two Soviet cosmonauts safely jettisoned after a launch pad explosion.