Russian spacecraft with 3 astronauts docks successfully at International Space Station

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

NASA’s live broadcast from the Russian Mission Control showed the Soyuz spacecraft mooring at the space outpost at 8:33 p.m. Moscow time (1733 GMT) about 6 1/2 hours after lifting off from the Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan.

The Soyuz TMA-19 M was carrying Russian Yuri Malenchenko, Timothy Kopra of NASA and Briton Timothy Peake, representing the European Space Agency.

After an automatic docking was aborted for an unspecified reason, Malenchenko moved the ship back a bit to assess its systems and then performed a neat docking on manual controls.

Peake, a 43-year-old former army helicopter pilot, is the first Briton to visit the International Space Station.

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 orbiting space station since March and are on a yearlong mission.