Live coverage: Soyuz crew capsule arrives at space station

A Russian Soyuz rocket thundered to life with a burst of flame and shot away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Wednesday carrying an international crew of three aloft on a six-hour flight to the International Space Station.

A Russian Proton rocket launched at 0345 GMT Thursday (11:45 p.m. EDT Wednesday) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with the EchoStar 21 communications satellite, a hefty 7.6-ton telecommunications station designed to support a mobile network in Europe. Managed by U.S.-based International Launch Services, the mission will take more than nine hours to deliver EchoStar 21 into a geostationary transfer orbit using five burns of the Breeze M upper stage engine.

Officials have accepted a Friday launch date for a commercial cargo ship to the International Space Station after Range availability scuttled notions of moving up the Atlas 5 flight by a day.