After a two-week delay, the American space shuttle Discovery has taken off from Cape Canaveral in Florida to the International Space Station.
The BBC reports the craft is one of the last four shuttle missions to the station before the programme is shut down at the end of 2010.
Three of the shuttle crew are female and will join a fourth woman there.
On Sunday, a Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut, docked successfully with the station.
