A Soyuz TMA-19M rocket carrier has been launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with three new crew members heading to the International Space Station.

The new crew members are Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, NASA astronaut Timothy Kopra, and European Space Agency astronaut Timothy Peake.

The Soyuz is set to dock with the International Space Station six hours after it was launched at 17:12 GMT.

The Soyuz is set to dock with the International Space Station six hours after it was launched at 17:12 GMT. Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Korniyenko and Sergey Volkov, as well as NASA's astronaut Scott Kelly are currently on board the ISS.

The fresh crew is set to carry out work with the Progress M-M cargo craft, conduct a spacewalk for the Russian space program, dock Dragon and Sygnus cargo spacecraft for the United States and retrofit the Russian and US ISS segments.

The ISS is a joint project between the European, Russian, US, Canadian, and Japanese space agencies. Launched in 1998, it eventually replaced Russia's Mir space station to serve as a low orbit laboratory and observatory. The station holds a maximum of six crew members.