Indian-American Sunita Williams, a record-setting astronaut today took off on her second space mission in a Russian spacecraft from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Forty six year-old Sunita Williams is accompanied by two flight engineers –Japan's Akihiko Hoshide and Yury Malenchenko of Russia. Sunita who lived and worked aboard the International Space Station for six months in 2006, departed on a two-day voyage to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft at around 08:10 IST.

Russian news agency Ria Novosti reports, the Soyuz TMA is due to dock with the ISS's Zvezda service module at 10:22 IST on Tuesday. Sunita, a flight engineer on the station's Expedition and 32 crew, will take over as commander of Expedition 33 on reaching the space station.

The crew will join the current ISS occupants who have been in orbit since mid-May. The new crew members are expected to conduct over 30 scientific missions during their stay on board the ISS. In the space, they plan an orbital sporting event to mark the Summer Olympics in London.

Sunita Williams, whose father hailed from Gujarat, holds the record of the longest space flight, that is 195 days for female space travelers. She received a Master's degree from the Florida Institute of Technology in 1995.