MOSCOW, May 17 (Xinhua) -- A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a crew of three has docked with the International Space Station (ISS), the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos said Thursday.
The spaceship docked with the Russian Poisk module aboard the space station at 8:36 Moscow time (0436 GMT) in automatic mode, the mission control center said.
The Soyuz rocket, carrying the manned spacecraft, blasted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on Tuesday with Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin, and U.S. astronaut Joe Acaba.
It was crew commander Padalka's fourth space flight and first space trip for environmental engineer Revin. California-born hydrogeologist Acaba, who performed his first spacewalk in 2009, is celebrating his 45th birthday in space on Thursday.
The hatches will open at around 0800 GMT. The crew will then enter the space station and join Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, U.S. astronaut Donald Pettit and Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers who arrived at the space station in December.
The crew will conduct several scientific experiments and a spacewalk during their four-month-long space journey.
The launch of the Soyuz spacecraft had been postponed for about two months after an air leak was found in the spacecraft's re-entry vehicle. After the retirement of the U.S. shuttle fleet, Russia's Soyuz spacecraft is the only vehicle for astronauts to reach the ISS at least until 2015.
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