An uncrewed spaceship is launched toward the International Space Station (ISS) Friday morning as planned to replace a damaged vehicle at the Russian part that's no longer deemed safe to return to Earth. 

Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, launched the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft without a crew atop a Soyuz-2.1A rocket from Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:34 a.m. local time (0024 GMT).

This was the second Soyuz rocket launch and the first flight for the Soyuz spacecraft this year.

The primary aim of the Soyuz MS-23 mission is to replace the existing Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, which suffered from a space rock impact in December 2022.

The spaceship is expected to dock autonomously to the zenith port of the Poisk mini-research module on the Russian segment of the ISS early Sunday Moscow time after a two-day rendezvous.

The Soyuz vehicle has been long awaited by cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin of Roscosmos and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, but it can't bring them back until September. They were launched in the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft in September last year and were scheduled to return by the end of March.

A scheduled spacewalk was canceled on December 14 last year as coolant leaking was detected on the MS-22. Both U.S. and Russian space officials believed the leak was caused by a tiny space rock hit.

In addition to the three crew members awaiting the arrival of MS-23, there are also four others currently on the ISS, who arrived on a SpaceX Dragon capsule last October as part of the Crew-5 mission.

(With input from AFP)