Soyuz takes 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. More

(Source: CBS News - May 29)