Soyuz Flies US-Russian Crew to Space Station

The Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz TMA-12M space ship carrying a new crew to the International Space Station (ISS) blasts off at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, March 26, 2014.

The United States and Russia may be at odds over Ukraine, but they are still cooperating in space.

A Russian Soyuz rocket took off from Kazakhstan Tuesday to fly two cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut to the International Space Station.

Oleg Artemyev, Alexander Skvortsov, and Steve Swanson will spend the next six months aboard the station carrying out a series of scientific experiments.

The current space station crew - a Russian, an American, and a Japanese astronaut - will return home in May.

Travelers to the orbiting outpost rely on the Russian Soyuz to take them to and from Earth since the United States retired the space shuttle fleet in 2011..