Soyuz lifts off with three bound for space station

A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off Tuesday and thundered into orbit carrying a veteran cosmonaut, NASA's sixth female station resident and a rookie Italian test pilot on a fast-track six-hour flight to the International Space Station.

With Soyuz TMA-09M commander Fyodor Yurchikhin at the controls, flanked by European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano on his left and shuttle veteran Karen Nyberg on his right, the workhorse Russian rocket roared to life at 4:31:24 p.m. EDT (GMT-4; 2:31 a.m. Wednesday local time), lighting up the night sky with a burst of fiery exhaust.

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Quickly climbing away from its launching pad -- the same pad used by Yuri Gagarin at the dawn of the space age -- the Soyuz rocket quickly accelerated as it gulped its load of liquid oxygen and kerosene propellants, arcing away to the east as it climbed into the plane of the space station's orbit.

Live television from inside the cramped Soyuz command module showed all three crew members as they monitored the automated ascent, looking relaxed despite the steadily building acceleration pushing them back into their custom seats.

The rocket's four liquid-fueled strap-on boosters, which operate collectively as the booster's first stage, shut down and fell away as planned about two minutes after launch, followed by the central second stage core booster three minutes after that.

The Soyuz rocket's third stage continued the push to space and eight minutes and 45 seconds after liftoff, the TMA-09M spacecraft was released into its planned preliminary orbit. A few moments later, the craft's two solar panels and navigation antennas deployed as expected.

The space station passed over the launch site just four minutes before liftoff at an elevation of about 77 degress. When the Soyuz was released from its booster, Yurchikhin and company were trailing their target by about 2,550 miles.

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Soyuz lifts off with three bound for space station