Russian, American, Japanese astronauts board space station

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FILE - In this Thursday, July 7, 2016, file photo, the Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz MS space ship carrying a new crew to the International Space Station, ISS, blasts off at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. The capsule carrying astronauts from Russia, Japan and the United States has docked with the International Space Station Saturday after a two-day voyage. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky, File)

MOSCOW – Three astronauts from the United States, Russia and Japan boarded the International Space Station on Saturday after a two-day journey aboard a Russian Soyuz space capsule.

The capsule docked smoothly with the space station at 0406 GMT (12:06 a.m. EDT) Saturday at a height of 412 kilometres (254 miles) above the Earth. Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said the crew entered the station about two hours later.

Russian Anatoly Ivanishin, NASA’s Kathleen Rubins and Takuya Onishi of the Japanese space agency JAXA are beginning a four-month stay on the orbiting space laboratory. They joined American Jeff Williams and Russians Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin, who have been aboard since mid-March.

The capsule blasted off from Russia’s manned space complex in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on Thursday.

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