 The cosmonauts blasted off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral in Florida (Picture: Reuters) Nasa's Jasmin Moghbeli, a Marine pilot serving as commander, said her crew's make-up demonstrates 'what we can do when we work together in harmony'. With her on the six-month mission are the European Space Agency's Andreas Mogensen, Japan's Satoshi Furukawa and Russia's Konstantin Borisov. 'To explore space, we need to do it together,' the European Space Agency's director general, Josef Aschbacher, said minutes before lift-off. 'Space is really global, and international co-operation is key.' The astronauts' paths to space could not be more different. Ms Moghbeli's parents fled Iran during the 1979 revolution. Born in Germany and raised on New York's Long Island, she joined the Marines and flew attack helicopters in Afghanistan. The first-time space traveller hopes to show Iranian girls that they, too, can aim high. 'Belief in yourself is something really powerful,' she said before the flight. Mr Mogensen worked on oil rigs off the West African coast after getting an engineering degree. He told people puzzled by h){kind=link}
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Four astronauts from four different countries have blasted off for the International Space Station.
They should reach the orbiting lab in their SpaceX capsule on Sunday, replacing four astronauts who have been living up there since March.
A US Nasa astronaut was joined on the pre-dawn lift-off from the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral in Florida by colleagues from Denmark, Japan and Russia.