A relatively inexperienced crew of two astronauts and a cosmonaut blasted off today 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 11:12 GMT for a planned docking at the space station on Friday.