A Russian Soyuz spacecraft blasted off to the International Space Station carrying two Russian cosmonauts and one American astronaut, that was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Central Asia.

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This Soyuz TMA-20M rocket launched around 5:26 P.M. EST last Friday where it settled into lower Earth orbit after 10 minutes from liftoff where mission control announced that it was a seamless launch. Currently, the spacecraft already docked at the orbiting space laboratory. NASA mission control reports that the crew is now firmly affixed to the space station.

These three space explorers who arrived safely at the space station are Soyuz commander for Expedition 47 Jeff Williams of NASA, Roscosmos' flight engineers Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin who will remain at the ISS for a period of five and half months for their mission.

They will join the current crew at the space lab that includes European Space Agency's British astronaut, Tim Peake, NASA's Tim Kopra and Roscosmos' Yuri Malenchenko where Williams will replace Kopra in June when Kopra goes home.

Their mission will involve studying and observing fire events in zero gravity environments and observe how meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere along with studying the behavior of soil in space. Apart from these, they will also carry out experiments involving adhesive devices that function similar to geckos along with testing a state of the art 3D printer in microgravity conditions.

Williams is also determined to beat Scott Kelly's stay at the ISS which lasted for 340 days, and when he beats him, he will become the current American astronaut who have stayed the longest in space. Being a veteran in space, Wiliams have already endured three Soyuz trips including a Space Shuttle journey back in 2011.

For this Expedition 47 mission, Williams will thrive to set an American record of breaking the longest cumulative stay in the space station for 534 days. To date, Williams' total number of days in space is 362. Currently, the world record belongs to Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka when he stayed for a total of 879 days in space.