The Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft with three crew members blasted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan late Thursday and reached orbit several minutes later, a Roscosmos spokesman said.

"The spacecraft separated from the third stage of the Soyuz-FG rocket," he said.

The spacecraft carries Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet, and NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson.

It is the 50th mission to the ISS.