Early today, a Soyuz spacecraft having three astronauts was launched for the International Space Station. Mission control announced that everything is going well and the crew is doing fine.

The crew comprises of Sergei Volkov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, head of the team and Aidyn Aimbetov from Kazakhstan and Andreas Mogensen of European Space Agency, both of them are first time flyers.

The team will reach at the ISS in two days. Aimbetov and Mogensen are scheduled to have one week stay but veteran cosmonaut Volkov will stay at the ISS. He will stay there for 188 days. Mogensen is the first Danish to go to space. Mogensen was of the view that it is a proud moment for him to represent Denmark as an astronaut.

Aimbetov, 43, has taken many things along with him like dried horse milk and other national staples and a toy from his daughter, who said that her father might encounter alien life.

The launch is the first since the July 23 incident in which Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and US astronaut Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yu of Japan died in the blast. Though it takes six hours to reach the ISS, but the team will reach in two days.

The space agencies have intentionally chosen this route and termed it to be the safest and most reliable. Space travel continues to be part of international cooperation between Russia and the West and has remained unaffected by the Ukraine crisis.