Spacecraft carrying Russians and American takes off from Baikonur cosmodrome

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A spacecraft carrying an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts took off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan late on Wednesday evening en route to the International Space Station (ISS).

The Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft was carrying NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Russians Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, whose journey to the ISS was expected to take three hours.

(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)