Spacecraft docks with ISS

Italy's first female astronaut among three crew members in Soyuz capsule

A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sunday to deliver three new crew members to the International Space Station, including Italy's first female astronaut.

A Soyuz capsule carrying incoming station commander Terry Virts from the US space agency NASA, Soyuz commander Anton Shkaplerov from the Russian Federal Space Agency, and first-time flier Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency, lifted off at 21:01 GMT on Sunday (5:01 am on Monday, China time).

Less than six hours later, the capsule flew into a berthing port on the Russian side of the station as the two ships sailed about 420 km over the central Pacific Ocean, NASA mission commentator Kyle Herring from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, said.

Their voyage will mean major food upgrades for the astronauts aboard, with nearly a kilogram of caviar in their baggage and an espresso machine.

"There will be 15 boxes of 30 grams each of caviar, but also apples, oranges, tomatoes and 140 doses of freeze-dried milk and black tea without sugar," a space station official told Russian news agency TASS.

Astronauts on the station will also finally be able to enjoy a decent brew thanks to the 20 kg machine designed by famed Italian coffee makers Lavazza and engineering firm Argotec, which specializes in making space food.

The station, owned and operated by 15 nations, serves as an orbiting laboratory for life science, materials research, technology development and other experiments using the unique microgravity environment and vantage point of space.

"I think that 100 years from now, 500 years from now, people will look back on this as the initial baby steps that we took going into the solar system," Virts told a prelaunch news conference.

"In the same way that we look back on (Christopher) Columbus and the other explorers 500 years ago, this is the way people will look at this time in history."

The $100 billion research laboratory has been short-staffed since Nov 9, when Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suraev, European astronaut Alexander Gerst and NASA's Reid Wiseman returned home after five and a half months in orbit.

The new crew faces a busy six months in orbit, including a trio of spacewalks to prepare the station for a new fleet of US commercial space taxis due to begin flying astronauts to the station in late 2017.

Cristoforetti, 37, an Italian air force pilot, deflected questions about being Italy's first female astronaut, during a webcast prelaunch news conference from Kazakhstan on Saturday.

Reuters - AP