Three astronauts aboard a Soyuz rocket have successfully docked with the International Space Station after the successful launch at 5:02 pm E. T. The manned rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and the crew orbited the earth four times over a period of six hours before eventually catching up with the space station.

The ISS, which orbits our home planet at 17,500 mph, will have three new astronauts-- American astronaut Kjell Lindgren, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui Soyuz commander Oleg Kononenko. The three astronauts will spend five months at the ISS before they come back on earth on December 22.

Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka will welcome the new crew at the ISS. Kornienko and Padalka have already completed 117 days in space after they were launched in the early hours of March 28.

The Russian spacecraft docked with the ISS at 10:45 pm eastern time Thursday. The US has rented the Russian spacecraft for ferrying NASA astronauts to and fro the ISS because it has not been able to come up with its spacecraft to launch astronauts into space after the retirement of its space shuttle in 2011. But nevertheless, the US is expecting its own spacecraft to piggyback astronauts to the ISS by 2017.

"The continued success of the Russian Soyuz is benefiting everyone flying to the ISS because of its reliability", said Lance Erickson, program coordinator for commercial space operations at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida.