American astronomer-turned-medical physicist and now NASA astronaut Chris Williams joined two Russian cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz ferry ship Thursday for a Thanksgiving Day flight to the International Space Station.

With commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov at the controls of the Soyuz MS-28/74S spacecraft, flanked on his left by flight engineer Sergey Mikaev and on the right by Williams, the crew's Soyuz 2.1a booster roared to life at 4:27 a.m. Eastern and smoothly climbed away from the Russian-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Nine minutes and 45 seconds later, the Soyuz spacecraft was released from the booster's upper stage, its two solar wings unfolded and the crew set off in pursuit of the space station. If all goes well, the automated two-orbit rendezvous will end with a docking at

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