A crew of U.S. and Russian astronauts successfully docked with the International Space Station early Friday morning after launching from a facility in Kazakhstan. The Russian Soyuz launched at 2:25 a.m. Friday local time carryingthe first female Russian cosmonaut to serve on the ISS, one Russian man and one American astronaut. It docked about six hours later.

NASA’s Barry Wilmore and Russians Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova are set to serve a six-month stint at the station. They'll join three other astronauts already on board.

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This is the first space mission for Serova, who is the first Russian woman to fly to space since 1997 and also the first to serve on the ISS. Serova, a 38-year-old a space industry engineer, is only the fourth Russian woman to fly to space, Reuters reports. RussianValentina Tereshkova was the first woman to travel to space in 1963.

"There were a number of women on the ISS before me, but I will be the first Russian woman cosmonaut," she said in a NASA interview, according to CBS News. "I never thought about it too much because space is what I do for work, and that's what I think about it: it's my work. But obviously for Russian women, it might be a breakthrough in this area."

Serova is the first Russian woman to fly to space since 1997, and the fourth woman in the history of the Soviet and Russian space programs. Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space in 1963.

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Since the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet in 2011, Russian Soyuz spacecraft have served as the only means to ferry crew to and from the space outpost, the latest price tag being $71 million per seat.

Earlier this month, NASA made a major step toward ending the period of expensive dependence on Russian spacecraft, picking Boeing and SpaceX to transport astronauts to the station in the next few years. The California-based SpaceX, led by billionaire Elon Musk, has indicated its seats will cost $20 million apiece.

NASA has set a goal of 2017 for the first launch from Cape Canaveral.

SpaceX is already using its unmanned Dragon capsule to deliver supplies to the space station, and is developing its manned version.

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Expedition 36 Flight Engineer Alexander Misurkin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) is carried to the medical tent shortly after he and, Commander Pavel Vinogradov of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Chris Cassidy of NASA landed in their Soyuz capsule. (AP Photo/NASA, Bill Ingalls)