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Astronauts in successful Soyuz launch two months after aborted mission

The crew is made up of an American, Canadian and Russian.

David Saint-Jacques, Anne McClain and Oleg Kononenko en route to the launch pad (Aubrey Gemignani/AP) Expand

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David Saint-Jacques, Anne McClain and Oleg Kononenko en route to the launch pad (Aubrey Gemignani/AP)

David Saint-Jacques, Anne McClain and Oleg Kononenko en route to the launch pad (Aubrey Gemignani/AP)

David Saint-Jacques, Anne McClain and Oleg Kononenko en route to the launch pad (Aubrey Gemignani/AP)

Three astronauts have blasted off to the International Space Station, a successful launch that follows October’s aborted mission.

Nasa astronaut Anne McClain, David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency and Oleg Kononenko of the Russian space agency Roscosmos lifted off as scheduled on Monday from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

A Soyuz-FG rocket carrying Nasa astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Alexei Ovchinin failed two minutes into its flight on October 11, activating an automatic rescue system that sent their capsule into a steep ride back to Earth.

A Russian investigation attributed the failure to a sensor that was damaged during the rocket’s final assembly.

Since the mishap, four successful Soyuz launches have been conducted to clear the path for the crew’s launch.

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