A Russian woman will be coming aboard the International Space Station as part of the new team to man the outpost for six months.

Elena Serova, a 38-year-old space industry engineer was chosen together with fellow Russian Alexander Samokutyaev and U.S. astronaut Barry Wilmore to be the new U.S.-Russian team to partake in monitoring occurrences in space through the International Space Station. They will join the current team headed by Russian commander Maxim Suraev in the ISS laboratory, although the latter's group is set to return to Earth in November.

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Serova's group will be serving and spending 170 days in the International Space Station They are expected to return to Earth in March. Her group was flown to space onboard the Russian rocket The Soyuz TMA-14M that lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday. A live broadcast of the lift-off was shown by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The team was expected to reach the ISS six hours after lift-off.

In a news conference held on Friday before lift-off, Serova expressed that being the first Russian woman to fly to the ISS, she feels a huge responsibility towards the people who taught and trained them, and vows to not let them down.

Serova is just one of four Russian women who were able to fly in space, and the first to serve in the International Space Station.  Her predecessors, namely Valentina Tereshkova, Svetlana Savitskaya and Yelena Kondakova were able to leave Earth to space in 1963, 1982 and 1994 respectively.

The International Space Station is a US$100 billion joint venture of the United States and Russia. The current lift-off to the ISS laboratory occurred amid the building tension between the United States and Russia involving the latter's support for pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.

TagsElena Serova, International Space Station, Russia