ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION)
Leaving politics behind, a veteran Russian cosmonaut and a pair of rookie astronauts from the United States and Germany blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday (May 28) for a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station.
The crew's Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off at 3:57 p.m. EDT (1957 GMT) and headed into orbit, a live broadcast on NASA Television showed.
Less than six hours after lift off, the crew reached the station, a $100 billion research laboratory as it flew about 418 kilometres (260 miles) above the Pacific Ocean west of Peru.
The Soyuz slipped into a berthing port on the station's Rassvet module at 9:44 p.m. EDT/0144 GMT.
The station, a project of 15 nations, is overseen by the United States and Russia.
