One American, two Russians blast off in Russian spacecraft heading to International Space Station

MOSCOW (AP) — One American and two Russian space crew members blasted off Friday aboard a Russian spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a mission to the International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub lifted off on the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft at 8:44 p.m. local time ( 1544 GMT, 11:44 a.m. EDT).

O’Hara will spend six months on the International Space Station while Kononenko and Chub will spend a year there. Neither O’Hara nor Chub have ever flown to space before, but they are flying with veteran cosmonaut Kononenko, who has made the trip four times already.

The trio should arrive at the space station after a flight of about three hours.