A successful July 22 launch landed American astronaut Kjell Lindgren, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and Kimiya Yui from Japan on the International Space Station for a five-month stay. (NASA/A. Gemignani)

After a two-month delay, the International Space Station crew is back “,” according to NASA, reporting after the July 22 successful launch and arrival of a Soyuz space capsule carrying American astronaut Kjell Lindgren, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and Kimiya Yui from Japan.

The capsule, which lifted off Wednesday from a Russian-manned facility in Kazakhstan at 5:02 p.m. Eastern time, docked smoothly with the ISS about 250 miles above Earth. The crew, which will spend five months in space, join Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko — the first two people ever to attempt to stay aboard the ISS for a full year — and Gennady Padalka of Roscosmos. Kelly and Kornienko are more than four months into their record-breaking mission.

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Though the three new arrivals will conduct more than 250 experiments during their tenure in space, they will also have some unique jobs. They’ll be the first to taste lettuce and other crops grown aboard their interstellar home, and they’ll be shooting the moon — photographs, that is, to “calibrate navigation software on the ,” NASA notes.

The rocket reached orbit about 15 minutes after launch and circled the Earth four times before heading for the space station.

The launch was postponed by about two months after the April failure of an unmanned Russian cargo ship, which raised concerns about Russian rocketry. Another Russian cargo ship was successfully launched in early July.

Lindgren summed up the journey thus far with a tweet:

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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