Russia's Soyuz rocket blasts off into space to International Space Station

Baikonur, Kazakhstan

Russia's space agency Roscosmos said today it has "successfully launched into orbit" the first manned Soyuz flight to the International Space Station(ISS).

The Soyuz team consists of Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, Anne McClain of NASA and David Saint-Jacques of Canadian Space Agency. The Soyuz MS-11 flight lifted off from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

It is the first manned voyage to the ISS since the mission in October was aborted mid-air because of a rocket malfunction. 

According to Russian investigators, the rocket failure was caused due to sensor damage. 

Before the flight, US astronaut Anne Mcclain had said that she trusted the rocket.

"We trust our rocket. We're ready to fly. I think the space flight it's a hard task, it's a complicated task," she said, adding, "we know that systems will fail and so the importance is having redundant systems, and even twice redundant system."

"I think what we learned from the inside in October was how safe this rocket was," she said.

The ISS space laboratory has been orbiting the Earth since 1998.