Russian Soyuz rocket blasts off for space station
Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, veteran Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and NASA astronaut Sunita Williams launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-05M rocket from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 03:40 a.m. British time.
The trio are scheduled to berth early on Tuesday, joining NASA Flight Engineer Joseph Acaba and two Russian cosmonauts, Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin, aboard the ISS, a $100 billion (64 billion pounds) research complex orbiting about 240 miles (385 km) above Earth.
(Reporting by Robin Paxton and Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Eric Walsh)