The rocket reached orbit about 15 minutes after launch and circled the Earth four times before heading for the space station.

The capsule carried Oleg Kononenko of Russia, NASA's Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yui of Japan. Lindgren and Yui are on their first trips into space. Yui told a news conference that he was taking some sushi with him as a treat for the others.

They join Gennady Padalka, Mikhail Kornienko and Scott Kelly. The latter two are more than four months into a nearly year-long mission on the space station.

The launch was postponed by about two months after the April failure of an unmanned Russian cargo ship, which raised concerns about Russian rocketry. Another Russian cargo ship was successfully launched in early July.

The capsule docked with the ISS at 10:45 p.m. EST. (PHOTO/NASA)

While at the ISS, Lindgren, who is a doctor, will help U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly as he continues his one-year mission in space.

Lindgren plans to study how Kelly's eyes change in microgravity.

"We want to figure out what changes are going on with vision — what changes are going on in the anatomy and physiology of the eye — so we can better protect astronauts and cosmonauts in the future," Lindgren said.

This will be Lindgren's first time in space.

NASA currently pays Russia more than $70 million a seat for a trip to the space station. The space agency hopes to launch astronauts from Florida's Space Coast in two years with the commercial crew program.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, Russia cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui. (PHOTO/NASA)