Two Americans and a Russian are on their way to the International Space Station after a successful Soyuz rocket launch.

  • Soyuz launched from Kazakhstan at 1:44 p.m. EDT
  • 1 experiment will test effects on bone marrow in microgravity
  • See more space coverage here

NASA astronauts Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold, along with cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, blasted off from Kazakhstan on Wednesday afternoon Eastern time aboard a Soyuz spacecraft.

According to NASA, they will join the Expedition 55, which will "study Earth Atmospherics, the effects of microgravity on bone marrow, materials responses to space environments, and biological samples responses to simulated gravity."

The crew will dock with the ISS on Friday.

The astronauts and cosmonaut will also take part in a spacewalk and welcome in a new SpaceX Dragon cargo craft in early April.

They'll join current ISS occupants Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos, Scott Tingle of NASA and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.