The Soyuz aircraft lifted last night at 3:17 am local time towards International Space Station. It entered the orbit about 10 minutes later. The aircraft is carrying Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev and American Steve Swanson to the International Space Station.

A delay was caused after the aircraft suffered an engine problem. NASA has said that there is no danger for the crew. The crew is now expected to arrive at the space station on Thursday night. Six months would be spent by the new crew at the space station.

The arrival of a Russian spacecraft carrying three astronauts to the International Space Station has been delayed because of an engine snag. Actually, a 24-second engine burn was necessary to adjust the Soyuz spacecraft's orbiting path, but it did not occur as planned.

There is nothing to worry apart from the wait that the crew will have to do till Thursday. The Soyuz TMA-12M will arrive at the space station on Thursday at 7:58 EDT.

Failure of the ship's orientation system caused the glitch, said Roscosmos chief Oleg Ostapenko on Wednesday. The crew is doing absolutely fine and they are preparing for the long flight, said Ostapenko.

The crew is currently working on the spacecraft’s adjustment to right orbit to make it for the Thursday docking. Before last year, the Russian spacecraft was used to routinely travel two days to reach the space station. It would have been only the fifth time on Wednesday if the crew would have travelled through a six-hour fast-track route to the station.

Japan's Koichi Wakata, NASA's Rick Mastracchio and Russia's Mikhail Tyurin will greet the three astronauts traveling in the Soyuz at the space station.

Russia is paid nearly $71 million per seat by the US for flying astronauts to the orbiting space laboratory through 2017.