A Russian rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazahkstan on Sunday to send three new crew members to the International Space Station, including Italy's first female astronaut.
The capsule, carrying incoming station commander Terry Virts from U.S. space agency NASA, Soyuz commander Anton Shkaplerov from the Russian Federal Space Agency and first-time flier Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency lifted off at 4.01 p.m. EST Sunday, according to Reuters.
Under six hours later, the capsule flew into a port on the Russian side of the station as the two ships soared about 260 miles over the central Pacific Ocean, NASA mission commentator Kyle Herring from the Johnson Space Center in Houston confirmed in a statement.
The station is owned and operated by 15 nations and serves as an orbiting laboratory for life science, technology development, materials research and other experiments using the unique microgravity environment and vantage point of space.
"I think that 100 years from now, 500 years from now, people will look back on this as the initial baby steps that we took going into the solar system," Virts said during a pre-launch press conference. "In the same way that we look back on Columbus and the other explorers 500 years ago, this is the way people will look at this time in history."
Since Nov. 9, the $100 billion research lab has been short staffed when Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suraev, European astronaut Alexander Gerst and NASA's Reid Wiseman returned home after 5.5 months in orbit.
The new crew who will be up in orbit for the next six months, will go through at least three spacewalks to prepare the station for a new fleet of U.S. commercial space taxis set to start flying astronauts to the station sometime in late 2017.
Cristoforetti, 37, deflected questions about becoming Italy's first female astronaut during a prelaunch press conference.
"I have done nothing special to be the first Italian woman to fly to space. I just wanted to fly to space and I happen to be the first," Cristoforetti, who was speaking in Russian, said through a translator, according to Reuters.
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