A rocket carrying a team of two Russian cosmonauts and a French woman cosmonaut lifted off from Kazakhstan on Sunday headed for the International Space Station.
The two-stage Soyuz rocket was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan into an overcast sky without incident at 0859 GMT and went into orbit at 0908 GMT.
During their 10-day mission, Russians Colonel Viktor Afanasiev and Konstantin Kozeyev and Frenchwoman Claudie Haignere are to deliver a new emergency capsule to the ISS, which is currently manned by a US-Russian team.
The Soyuz is to dock with the ISS on Tuesday at 1141 GMT.
Afanasiev, commanding the mission, told space control centre near Moscow that the space vessel’s systems were functioning normally and that everyone on board was well.
The team is due also to carry out a variety of scientific experiments aboard the orbiting platform.
Haignere will become the first French cosmonaut to board the ISS.
The space flight is the eighth involving a joint Franco-Russian team, and both sides have stressed its importance as a symbol of their continuing cooperation.
Russia has lately boosted its ties with France in the field of space research, and Paris said in July that it might be prepared to allow Russia to launch its Soyuz rockets from the European space centre at Kourou, in French Guyana.
French Research Minister Roger-Gerard Schwartzenberg, attending a space lift-off for the first time, was at the Baikonur space centre to meet Russian officials and speak to the cosmonauts in the minutes before they blasted off.
Haignere has made one previous space-flight, also aboard a Russian rocket, to the Mir orbiting platform in 1996, while fellow engineer Kozeyev is making his debut flight.
She was accompanied to Baikonur by some members of her family including her husband Jean-Pierre, also a cosmonaut, who described the final moment of lift-off as “a release, the accomplishment of all our hopes.”
Flight commander Afanasiev noted Saturday that the replacement of the present Soyuz emergency capsule was essential for the current work-programme aboard the ISS to continue.
Prior to the launch, and in line a Russian custom introduced in 1994, the three were blessed by an Orthodox priest.
Security had been stepped up at the Baikonur cosmodrome” to take account of recent events in the world” — a reference to Kazakhstan’s relative proximity to Afghanistan, where US forces are engaged in a military campaign against the ruling Taliban.
