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Three new crew members are travelling to the International Space Station (ISS) after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Kate Rubins of Nasa, Soyuz commander Anatoly Ivanishin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency are on their way to ISS in an upgraded Soyuz spacecraft.

The crew members will spend two days, which is 34 Earth orbits, to test modified systems before docking to the ISS’s Rassvet module on 9 July.

The arrival of the three members takes the station’s crew to six. The three members will join Expedition 48 commander Jeff Williams of Nasa and flight engineers Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos.

Expedition 48 crew members will spend four months during which they will undertake more than 250 investigations in fields such as biology, Earth science, human research, physical sciences, and technology development.

"Expedition 48 crew members will receive and install the station’s first international docking adapter."

Rubins, Ivanishin and Onishi will remain aboard the station until late October while Williams, Skripochka and Ovchinin will come back to Earth in September.

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Expedition 48 crew members will receive and install the station’s first international docking adapter.

This adapter will accommodate future arrivals of commercial crew spacecraft.

Scheduled for delivery on SpaceX’s ninth commercial resupply mission (CRS-9) to the station, the new docking port comes with built-in systems for automated docking and uniform measurements.

Image: Takuya Onishi (top), Kate Rubins (middle), and Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin wave farewell before boarding Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft for launch. Photo: courtesy of Nasa.