Hatch opening of Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft and the International Space Station 15 December 2015.

Inside the spacecraft are ESA astronaut Tim Peake, NASA astronaut Tim Kopra and commander Yuri Malenchenko. Their launch was at 11:03 GMT (12:03 CET) from Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.

The trio will spend six months on the International Space Station. Tim Peake’s Principia mission includes  running over 30 scientific experiments for ESA.

Follow Tim Peake via timpeake.esa.int and follow the whole mission on ESA’s Principia blog.