Russia's Soyuz TMA-M manned spacecraft has docked with the International Space Station (ISS), the mission control said Sunday.

The Soyuz brought to the ISS Russian cosmonauts Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka and American US astronaut Scott Kelly. They will join cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and astronauts Douglas Wheelock and Shannon Walker, who arrived at the station in June.

The Soyuz TMA-M is a new model and was designed to replace the Soyuz TMA spacecraft currently in use.

The spacecraft had blasted off toward the ISS Friday from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan. The cosmonauts will perform three spacewalks and carry out over 40 scientific experiments during their six-month mission.