The Soyuz capsule carrying NASA's Sunita Williams, Japan's Akihiko Hoshide and Russia's Yury Malenchenko automatically docked with the ISS at 0451 GMT after blast-off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sunday.

When the hatches open in a few hours and the new crew moves from the capsule into the station, they will join the incumbent crew Russians Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin and American Joseph Acaba who have been on board since May.