MOSCOW: A Russian spacecraft carrying three astronauts from the United States, Britain and Russia has docked successfully at the International Space Station.

Nasa’s live broadcast from the Russian Mission Control showed the Soyuz spacecraft mooring smoothly at 8:33pm Moscow time at the space outpost on Tuesday about 6 hours after lifting off from Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan.

Aboard are Russian Yuri Malenchenko, Timothy Kopra of Nasa and Briton Timothy Peake, representing the European Space Agency.

Malenchenko docked the ship on manual controls after automatic docking was aborted for an unspecified reason.

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 space station since March and are on a year-long mission.

The launch went off with no reported problems and the capsule entered orbit about nine minutes after liftoff, at an altitude of about 212 kilometres.

The mission is to spend six months aboard the space station. Already aboard are Russians Sergey Volkov and Mikhail Korniyenko, along with American Scott Kelly. The latter two have been on the space station since March and are on a year-long mission.

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2015