The Soyuz TMA-20 rocket, with a Russian, an Italian and an American aboard, took off in the night sky at 10:09 pm Moscow time (1909 GMT).

It lifted off on schedule from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in the Kazakh steppe, spitting out a plume of fire and smoke and disappearing into the star-lit sky, an AFP correspondent reported.

The launch had gone according to plan and the craft successfully went into orbit, the Russian Mission Control said.

The spacecraft is due to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) at 11:12 pm Moscow time (2012 GMT) on Friday.

The commander of the crew is Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev, who is on his first space flight.

Joining him are Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency, who has made one space flight before, and NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman, who has two space missions under her belt.

Kondratyev, who has been waiting 13 years for his first flight, promised his crew would do everything to live up to expectations during their five-month stay in space.

"Our crew is very closely-knit, we have known each other for a long time, we have repeatedly served together as backup astronauts," Kondratyev said in comments released by the Russian Space Agency.

"I assure you that we will do our best to implement the programme with maximum quality," he was quoted as saying.

At 1.88 metres (six foot two), Kondratyev's team member Nespoli may be the tallest astronaut to have been sent into space aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft and Russia's rocket company Energia had to make a special seat for him.

"A big man - a big seat," Energia head Vitaly Lopota said in comments posted on the website of the Russian Mission Control.

The three-member crew is to join NASA's Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka abord the ISS.

The last launch at Baikonur in October was attended by convicted spy Anna Chapman, a member of the Russian spy ring involved in a high-profile swap with the United States in the summer.

The burden on the Russian space programme is set to grow in the next months as NASA withdraws the space shuttle from service, meaning that the Soyuz craft will for several years be the only vehicle for transporting humans to the ISS.

Wednesday's flight comes after the spacecraft suffered damage to its container in transit on its way to Baikonur.

Engineers spotted the damage to the Soyuz TMA-20's transport container after it was shipped by rail to the Baikonur cosmodrome.

In another blow to the country's space programme, three Russian navigation satellites crashed into the Pacific off the US state of Hawaii after the rocket carrying them failed to reach orbit earlier this month.

Space officials have said the rocket carrying the payload failed to reach its initial low-earth orbit of 180 kilometers (112 miles).

The satellites were then to have been boosted into a permanent 19,130-kilometre orbit - but instead splashed back down into the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

The failure proved an embarrassing setback for a system that was meant to restore the country's status as a space and scientific research superpower.

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