Three new crew members of the International Space Station blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Sunday aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. Among the crew is Samantha Cristoforetti, Italy's first female astronaut.

The team lifted off at around 16:01 EST. The Soyuz spacecraft that will rendezvous with the ISS is carrying Terry Virts, incoming station commander and a NASA astronaut; Anton Shkaplerov of the Russian Federal Space Agency, who's s the Soyuz commander and Cristoforetti from the European Space Agency. This is Cristoforetti's first space flight.

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The space station orbits some 418 kilometers above Earth. The crew will reach the ISS within six hours.

The ISS is owned by 15 nations and functions as an orbiting lab where numerous experiments are carried out. These experiments involve life science, materials and technology development in a microgavity environment, among many others.

Virts said that after a hundred years or so, people will remember how the missions to the ISS serve as baby steps in space exploration. He compared the ISS mission to that of Columbus and other explorers 500 years ago.

Since November 9, the US$100 billion space lab has been short staffed since Russian astronaut Maxim Suraev, ESA's Alexander Gerst and NASA's Reid Wiseman came back to Earth after five and a half months in orbit.

This new ISS crew will be in orbit for six months. They will conduct three spacewalks to prepare for the new fleet of space taxis that will son arrive at the station. These taxis will begin transporting crew to the ISS in 2017.

Cristoforetti is an Air Force pilot. Before her space flight, she declined to answer queries about her being the first Italian female astronaut to journey into space. She said she hasn't accomplished anything special in becoming the first Italian woman in space.

She said she just wants to fly in space and is grateful to be the first Italian female to do so.

TagsISS, soyuz rocket, Kazakhstan, first female italian astronaut, new crew ISS space station first female italian astronaut, New ISS Crew Arrives at Space Station With First Female Italian Astronaut