An international crew aboard a Russian-made Soyuz rocket docked safely at the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday, the first manned voyage to the ISS since a mission in October was aborted midair because of a rocket malfunction.
The Soyuz docked at approximately 10:40 p.m. carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA astronaut Anne McClain and the Canadian Space Agency's David Saint-Jacques.
The rocket launch earlier from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan was closely scrutinized because of the abortive mission to the ISS on Oct. 11, which ended two minutes after take-off when a rocket failure forced its two-man crew to perform an emergency landing.
The new arrivals to the ISS join the European Space Agency's Alexander Gerst, NASA's Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Russia's Sergey Prokopyev, who have been in orbit since June but are due to fly back to Earth on Dec. 20.
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