Russia has launched an uncrewed Soyuz spacecraft on a rescue mission to return two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut whose trip back to Earth has been hampered after their original space vehicle was damaged by a mini meteorite while parked at the International Space Station (ISS).
The Soyuz MS-23 vessel blasted off successfully from the Russian-operated Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, live video broadcast by ISS partner NASA showed.
