A Russian Soyuz spacecraft with three astronauts on board blasted off from Kazakhstan on Monday to join a US-Russian duo manning the International Space Station (ISS).Russian Oleg Kotov, NASA's Timothy Creamer and Japan's Soichi Noguchi lifted off from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan as planned. This year Russia doubled to four the number of manned flights to the ISS aboard its single use Soyuz spacecraft and is set to bear the brunt of sending missions and cargo into space after NASA retires its ageing fleet of Space Shuttles next year or early in 2011.
