Soyuz TMA-17M lifts off successfully for International Space Station

NASA astronauts KJell Lindgren from the United States, Kimiya Yui from Japan and Oleg Kononenko from Russia had headed off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a five-month mission to the International Space Station.

The team will return to Earth in December.

Amidst three space rocket launch failures in the previous months, the three NASA crew took off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan a few hours earlier via Soyuz TMA-17M. The team will stay in space for five months for a spacecraft mission, Reuters reported.

The take off was originally scheduled in May but was delayed because of a series of launch failures that happened earlier.

In June, the SpaceX Falcon 9 exploded. Elon Musk, the founder of the spacecraft blamed an overpressure in the upper liquid oxygen tank as cause of explosion.

Last April, a press release from NASA stated that the Progress 59 had an unexpected spin. The Russian supply spaceship went back to the Earth after a week and a half. It is owed from a wrong installation of its navigational antennas.

Space.com reported the tragic explosion of Antares Rocket by Orbital Science Corporation carrying 5,000 lbs. of supplies for International Space Station when the Wallops Island Flight Facility sends it off.

Oleg Kononenko, crew commander, said the most important for the crew is to have all the necessary things that they will need during the first days on the ISS.

"We need to prepare ourselves for work. First of all, we will take care of ourselves. And after that we will take care of the urgent experiments that will need to be unstowed and moved somewhere. After that we will open our food containers and hopefully we will have a good dinner," Konenko told CBC News.

Before the Soyuz TMA spacecraft was launched, Soyuz FG was departed from Baikonur for a six-hour journey to rendezvous with the International Space Station.

The attempt for an immediate rendezvous to the space station was due to past incidents where crew members had endured space illness experiencing strain and difficult times in a two-day trip, explained NASA Space Flight.