Russia resumes manned spacecraft flight after crash

A Russian spacecraft carrying three astronauts - two Russians and one American - has launched successfully from Kazakhstan, BBC News reported.

They are the first to travel on a Russian Soyuz craft since a similar unmanned rocket carrying cargo crashed shortly after launch in August.

All manned space travel was suspended after that crash for almost three months.

The astronauts are on their way to the International Space Station.

The rocket lifted off from Baikonur at 04:14 GMT.

Once safely in orbit, the three astronauts gave a thumbs-up signal to cameras on board the craft and applause broke out at the mission control centre in a northern Moscow suburb.

On 24 August, a similar Russian-built Soyuz rocket taking supplies to the space station crashed soon after launch.

That led to the human space flight programme being suspended until now.

But in their final comments to the media before the launch, the three men insisted they were confident in the technology and had no concerns.

For veteran Nasa astronaut Dan Burbank, 50, it is his first voyage on board a Soyuz spacecraft, while cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin, 42, and Anton Shkaplerov, 39, are making their maiden space voyage.

"We don't have any black thoughts. We have faith in our equipment," Anton Shkaplerov told journalists before the launch at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

After a two-day journey aboard the Soyuz capsule, the crew will dock with the space station, overlapping briefly with the current crew - station commander Mike Fossum of Nasa, Japan's Satoshi Furukawa and Russia's Sergei Volkov - who will then return to earth.

The launch is the first since the American space agency Nasa ended its 30-year shuttle programme in July, heralding a gap of several years when the 16 nations investing in the $100bn International Space Station will rely solely on Russia to ferry crews.