Rocket with three-man crew blasts off to space station

The Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft carrying the crew of Timothy Peake of Britain, Yuri Malenchenko of Russia and Timothy Kopra of the U.S. blasts off to the International Space Station (ISS) from the launchpad at the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, December 15, 2015. REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - A Soyuz spacecraft successfully delivered a Russian, an American and a Briton to the International Space Station on Tuesday after blasting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The otherwise smooth journey ended with a slightly delayed docking at 1733 GMT as Russian commander Yuri Malenchenko aborted the automatic procedure and manually guided the spacecraft towards the station.