Bang on schedule, Yuri Malenchenko, Tim Kopra, and Tim Peake took off on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan this morning. They made it safely into orbit.
Now en route to the International Space Station, the crew seems relaxed. Indeed, Tim Peake gave this rather enthusiastic thumbs up from the Soyuz capsule.
Top image by AP, bottom image by NASA