A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying three astronauts blasted off toward the International Space Station on Saturday, two days after the mission was canceled at the last minute.
The spacecraft departed safely from the Baikonur Launch Center in Kazakhstan, with NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson on board; Oleg Novitsky, of Roscosmos, and Belarusian Marina Vasilevskaya.
The missile was scheduled to be launched on Thursday, but an automatic safety system stopped it about 20 seconds before the scheduled time. The head of the Russian Space Agency, Yuri Borisov, said that there was a voltage drop in a power source.
The space capsule atop the rocket separated and entered orbit eight minutes after launch, beginning a two-day, 32-orbit journey to the space station. If the launch had taken place on Thursday, as planned, the flight would have required only two orbits. The docking is scheduled to take place on Monday at 1510 GMT.
The three astronauts will join the current crew of NASA astronauts Loral O'Hara, Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, Janet Epps, and Russians Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, and Alexander Grebenkin.
Novitsky, Vasilevskaya and O'Hara plan to return to Earth on April 6.
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