Two-member crew head to space station aboard Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft – Watch liftoff

New Delhi: Two crew members - an astronaut and a cosmonaut - are launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on a Russian Soyuz rocket on Thursday.

NASA astronaut Jack Fischer and his Expedition 51-52 crewmate Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin lifted off on Russia's Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft, atop a Soyuz-FG rocket, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:13 a.m. EDT Thursday, April 20 (1:13 p.m. Baikonur time).

LIFTOFF! @Astro2Fish and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin leave Earth to head to @Space_Station. Watch: https://t.co/mzKW5uDsTi pic.twitter.com/EDkrKo04XZ — NASA (@NASA) April 20, 2017

At the time of launch, the space station was flying about 250 miles over northeast Kazakhstan near the southern Russian border. NASA astronaut Jack Fischer and Fyodor Yurchikin of Roscosmos are now safely in orbit.

Launched on a fast-track, six-hour course to the space station, Fischer and Yurchikhin are said to dock to the Poisk module at 9:23 a.m. The pair will be welcomed by Expedition 51 Commander Peggy Whitson of NASA and Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos and Thomas Pesquet of ESA.

Once they arrive at the station, they will join the three astronauts already living in the orbiting lab and will become part of Expedition 51 crewmates.

Expedition 51 will continue work on hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science aboard the International Space Station, humanity’s only microgravity laboratory.

According to NASA, Fischer is a first-time space flier, whereas Yurchikhin is a veteran of four spaceflights. They will spend more than four months aboard the orbiting laboratory before returning to Earth in early September.