A Soyuz spacecraft lifted off on Tuesday with a Russian, a US and a Japanese astronaut aboard headed for the International Space Station (ISS).

The spacecraft carrying American Mike Fossum, Russian Sergei Volkov and Satoshi Furukawa of Japan lifted off at about 2012 GMT from the launchpad at Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

"The flight is normal," the control centre told the international crew.

The three will join Russians Alexander Samokutyaev and Andrey Borisenko and American Ronald Garan aboard the ISS where they will spend the next half year.

Fossum is a veteran of two shuttle flights while Volkov has already had one stint aboard the ISS in 2008. Furukawa is making his first space flight.

The spacecraft is scheduled to hook up with the ISS on Thursday at 2122 GMT.

The launch comes just a month before NASA is scheduled to launch the space shuttle for the last time before it is taken out of service.

After the flight by the space shuttle Atlantis, Russia's Soyuz launch system -- whose basic design has changed little since the dawn of human space flight -- will become the sole means for transporting humans to the ISS.

It is expected to be some years before NASA introduces a replacement for the Soyuz.

The extra pressure on the space programme coincides with a time of turbulence at Russia's space agency, which saw its long-serving head Anatoly Perminov fired by the government after a string of failures.

The Soyuz launch is Russia's first manned space flight under new Roskosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin after Perminov's sacking in April.

Popovkin faces the task of reforming an agency still reeling one of from its most embarrassing space failures in recent times in December when three navigation satellites crashed into the ocean instead of reaching orbit.

This and other technical issues cast a shadow on the 50th anniversary year in 2011 of Yuri Gagarin's first space flight, still celebrated in Russia as one of its greatest achievements.

Russia is now using a new version of the Soyuz spacecraft that has been the lynchpin of Moscow's space programme over the last decades.

The new spacecraft has a new onboard movement control and navigation system as well as a new onboard measuring system.

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