Russia launches new spaceship flight to Intl Space Station

Russia launched a new flight featuring Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft with a three-member international crew aboard to the International Space Station (ISS) at 00:01 a.m. Moscow time (2100 GMT) Monday.

"The launch of the Soyuz-FG carrier rocket with the Soyuz TMA- 15M spaceship was carried out in a regular regime at the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan," Tass news agency quoted a spokesman for the Russian federal aerospace department as saying.

Aboard the manned spacecraft Soyuz TMA-13M this time were Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, Terry Virts from the NASA, the space agency of United States, as well as European Space Agency ( ESA) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, along with a 20-kilogram space coffee maker.

The manned spacecraft will dock with the ISS at 5:50 a.m. Moscow time Monday. The three cosmonauts will stay at the ISS for 169 days, executing tasks including carrying out legions of scientific experiments.

Currently working at the ISS are Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyayev and Yelena Serova, and NASA spaceman Barry Wilmore.