Oleg Skripochka

Check out a pictorial retrospective on Friday’s launch of three new space station crew members from Kazakhstan, riding an iconic Soyuz booster to orbit and arriving at the 250-mile-high research complex less than six hours later.

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying two cosmonauts and a veteran NASA astronaut blasted off from Kazakhstan Friday, chased down the International Space Station and glided to a smooth automated docking, boosting the lab’s crew back to six.

A Soyuz rocket climbed away from a historic launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday with three new crew members heading for the International Space Station.