Canadian astronaut blasts off on Russian rocket headed to space

Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques has officially embarked on his first adventure in space.

The 48-year-old doctor and astronaut blasted off from Kazakhstan at 6:31 a.m. eastern time Monday.

He is aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket bound for the International Space Station and lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome along with Anne McClain of NASA and Oleg Kononenko of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos.

LIFTOFF! Shooting into the sky at 6:31am ET, the Soyuz rocket carrying @AstroAnnimal, @Astro_DavidS and Oleg Kononenko leaves Earth on six-hour journey to their new home on @Space_Station. Watch: https://t.co/i3hRugl4X4 pic.twitter.com/xrgYvSg8UQ

— NASA (@NASA) December 3, 2018

The launch is the first first manned Russian rocket launch since a dramatic aborted Soyuz failure in October. A rocket failure forced a Soyux capsule carrying two astronauts to abort the mission and make an emergency landing.

Welcome to Space! The trio is now safely in orbit and solar arrays have successfully deployed on their Soyuz spacecraft. They will now embark on six-hour chasedown of the @Space_Station and are expected to arrive later today: https://t.co/FRrjhIw77o pic.twitter.com/2wmO3vC7iT

— NASA (@NASA) December 3, 2018