Three light sabre-wielding astronauts and an R2-D2 toy blasted off for the latest International Space Station (ISS) mission after a two-month delay following a botched launch.

A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying the three crew members was launched earlier on Thursday (AEST) from a Kazakhstan cosmodrome.

Russian officials breathed a sigh of relief as the 16-storey Soyuz TMA 17M rocket surged skywards from the launch pad.

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The astronauts docked successfully with the ISS under six hours after they launched, NASA television shows.

The crew, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, US astronaut Kjell Lindgren, and Kimiya Yui of Japan were among six astronauts who posed in Jedi robes with light sabres in the official expedition poster issued by NASA.

The Star Wars fans said they were taking an R2-D2 robot toy as a zero-gravity indicator for their mission.

When the toy begins to float, the crew will know they have reached orbit.

(L-R): Kjell Lindgren, Oleg Kononenko and Kimiya Yui. Photo: NASA

The station is a $100-billion research laboratory that flies about 418 kilometres above Earth.

The trio had been set to fly in May, but Russia delayed the mission after a failed launch of a similar Soyuz rocket on April 28.

That accident stranded a cargo spacecraft in an orbit too low to reach the station.

Nine days later, the capsule, loaded with 2.7 tonnes of equipment and supplies, was incinerated as it fell back into Earth’s atmosphere.

The failure forced a group of astronauts to spend an extra month aboard the station.

The team said the delay had given them extra time to prepare for their 163-day space mission.

“Training…check. Equipment…check. Rocket…check. Press conference…check. We are ready to fly!!” Dr Lindgren said on Twitter before the liftoff.

Japan’s Yui, 45, is now the 10th Japanese astronaut to have travelled in space.

Ahead of the launch, the three men met with 81-year-old cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space and one of the Apollo-Soyuz commanders.

At the space station the trio will be joining Russia’s Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Kornienko, as well as Scott Kelly of NASA.

Russian officials breathed a sigh of relief as the Soyuz TMA 17M rocket surged skywards from the launch pad. Photo: AAP