A Russian rocket carrying a three-man crew to the International Space Station has blasted off successfully from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, according to Reuters.
The Soyuz booster rocket lifted off as scheduled at 1:57 a.m. Thursday and soared into the darkness over the Central Asian steppe in what a NASA commentator described as a "flawless launch," Reuters reported.
The crew is comprised of NASA's Reid Wiseman, Russian cosmonaut Max Surayev and German Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency, according to Reuters. All three were set to arrive at the orbiting station less than six hours later and remain there for six months.
The crew will be joining two Russians and an American who have been at the station since March, Reuters reported.
The Russian and U.S. space agencies have continued to cooperate despite friction between the two countries over Ukraine, according to Reuters. NASA depends on the Russian spacecraft to ferry crews to the space station and pays Russia nearly $71 million per seat.
Tensions between the countries have been strained, following Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and economic sanctions imposed by the United States as punishment, but until recently, the space partnership was largely exempt from the political rancor and the sanctions' financial impacts, Reuters reported.
Aboard the space station, currently staffed by NASA astronaut Steven Swanson and two Russian cosmonauts, it's business as usual, Swanson said during an inflight interview broadcast on NASA Television on Tuesday, according to Reuters.
"We don't talk about it much, honestly," Swanson said, Reuters reported. "It does not affect our working relationship. We get along very well. There are no issues at all up here."
Until last year, Russian spacecraft used to travel two days to reach the station, and this will be only the fifth time that a crew has taken the six-hour "fast-track" route, according to Reuters. After the previous launch, in March, the crew ended up taking the longer route because of a software glitch.
