Rocket carrying NASA astronaut Jonny Kim, 2 Russian cosmonauts docks with space station

Jonny Kim, a former Navy SEAL, Harvard Medical School graduate and now a NASA astronaut blasted off with two cosmonaut crewmates aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket early Tuesday, chased down the International Space Station and moved in for a picture-perfect docking three hours after liftoff.

With veteran commander Sergey Ryzhikov, 50, at the controls, flanked on the left by rookie cosmonaut Alexey Zubritsky, 32, and on the right by Kim, 41, the Soyuz MS-27/73S ferry ship rocketed away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 1:47 a.m. EDT (10:47 a.m. local time).

"The crew is feeling good, everything is nominal," Ryzhikov periodically assured Russian flight controllers as the rocket climbed toward orbit.