Russian rocket speeds to space station

Three crew members arrived at the International Space Station, Wednesday evening. They join three others to bring the station's crew back to full-strength. During their time in space, one of the group's tasks will be to showcase the Olympic torch.

A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday to deliver three new crew members to the International SpaceStation.

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The Soyuz rocket and capsule lifted off at 4:58 p.m. EDT (2058 GMT) on an express route to the station, which orbits about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.

Less than six hours after liftoff, veteran Russian commander Oleg Kotov and rookies Sergey Ryazanskiy of Russia and Michael Hopkins of the United States reached the outpost, a $100 billion project of 15 nations. Only two other crews have made the journey as quickly. Previous Soyuz capsules took two days of orbital maneuvers to reach the station.

The arrival of Kotov, Ryazanskiy and Hopkins returns the station to its full, six-member live-aboard crew. Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and European SpaceAgency astronaut Luca Parmitano have been running the station on their own since Sept. 10.

The skeleton crew was to have overseen the arrival of a commercial cargo ship on a test flight to the station this week.

But a software problem left the unmanned Cygnus freighter unable to receive navigation data properly from the station, delaying its arrival until no earlier than Saturday to avoid conflicting with the Soyuz's berthing. Typically, at least 48 hours are needed between spacecraft dockings.

The cargo ship, built and launched by Orbital Sciences with backing from NASA, blasted off aboard an Antares rocket on Sept. 18 from a new launch pad on the Virginia coast.

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Russian rocket speeds to space station