An American and two Russians have boarded the International Space Station after a lightning journey from Earth, on a mission that will see the Olympic torch for the 2014 Sochi Games taken into space for the first time.
Michael Hopkins of NASA and Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky of Russia blasted off without a hitch from the Baikonur space centre that Moscow leases from Central Asia's ex-Soviet republic of Kazakhstan.
Their Soyuz-TMA-10M capsule docked successfully with the ISS just six hours later, in a new short cut route now used by the Russian space agency.
The new trio shortly afterwards joined the existing three-person crew on board.
The new team was greeted on board by Russian commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and his two flight engineers - Karen Nyberg of NASA and Italian Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency.
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Kotov and Ryazansky are expected to make history during the mission by carrying into open space the Olympic torch for the 2014 Winter Games that Russia is hosting in February in the Black Sea city of Sochi.
The torch, which on October 6 is due to start a relay around Russia, is not yet with the cosmonauts and is due to be carried up to space by the next Soyuz crew, who are due to travel to the ISS on November 7.
Kotov and Ryazansky are expected to take it into open space on a spacewalk on November 9, although Russian officials have made clear that the torch will at no point be lit, for safety reasons.
It will then be returned to Earth by Yurchikhin when he returns home with his two crewmates Parmitano and Nyberg days later on November 11.
The capsule orbited the Earth just four times on its way to the ISS as opposed to the usual 30, under a technique originally devised in the Soviet era but only adopted on a regular basis in the past year.
Scientists and space travellers had long weighed the benefits of such a sprint run.
The longer flight allows crew members to get better acclimated to the stresses of space while also testing their physical endurance - the ride takes a full 48 hours.
The shortcuts were abandoned after a few trial runs by the Soviet Union because one cosmonaut became so violently ill during the voyage that mission control at one point feared for his life.
But two such quick trips were successfully completed earlier this year and Russia decided to repeat the experience with a view to making them standard for future travel to the ISS.
Russian state television reported that among those present at the launch at Baikonur was French actor Gerard Depardieu, who was awarded Russian citizenship by President Vladimir Putin earlier this year.
The four-month stay of the three crew to be replaced has been more eventful than they might have liked.
Parmitano suffered a scare during a spacewalk on July 16 when his helmet began to fill with an unidentified liquid.
