The Russian Soyuz is the only current spacecraft capable of carrying people to the ISS

Oct 23, 2012 12:53 GMT  ·  By

The ISS is about to get three new guests, two Russian and one American astronauts have been propelled into space on top of a Soyuz rocket launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The Soyuz TMA-06M lifted off a few hours ago pushing the Soyuz capsule into low Earth orbit. The launch went on without a hitch, as you can see from the video published by NASA.

The three astronauts will spend a couple more days in the cramped Soyuz spacecraft before meeting with the ISS and coupling with the Russian Rassvet Poisk module.

NASA's Kevin Ford and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin are heading to the ISS to join the Expedition 33 crew made up of NASA's Sunita Williams, Roscosmos' Yuri Malenchenko and JAXA's Akihiko Hoshide.

The three astronauts launching today will remain onboard the ISS for half of the Expedition 34 stage. With them are 32 medaka fish, which will be part of an experiment studying the effects of zero gravity.