Russian space officials say a Russian spacecraft carrying two Russians and an American has successfully docked at the International Space Station.
The Soyuz TMA-22, carrying NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin, docked at the orbiting station two days after blasting off from Kazakhstan on Monday.
They are joining three men — from the U.S., Russia and Japan — who have been on board the space station since June.
The mission comes after new questions have been raised about Russia’s space program ever since an unmanned Progress cargo craft, which was taking supplies to the space station, crashed shortly after take-off in August.
The catastrophe — blamed on a technical malfunction — was one of Russia’s worst space disasters in decades, and disrupted operations to bring fresh crew members to the space station following the closure of the U.S. space shuttle program earlier this year.
compiled from agency reports