3 Cosmonauts on Flight to Space Station

Three Soviet cosmonauts rode into space Tuesday aboard the Soyuz T-14 craft to rendezvous with two colleagues who have been aboard the Salyut 7 space station for more than three months, Soviet media said.

Soviet television interrupted regular programming to announce the launching and show film of the rocket blasting into space at 4:30 p.m.

The official news agency Tass said the the three cosmonauts, commander Vladimir Vasyutin, engineer Georgy Grechko and researcher Alexander Volkov, will hook up with the Salyut 7 complex, where cosmonauts Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Viktor Savinykh have been since June 8.

Vasyutin, 33, is a space rookie who is a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet air force. Researcher Volkov, also a lieutenant colonel, is in space for the first time since entering the cosmonauts training program in 1976, Tass said.

Grechko is a 54-year-old veteran who, along with fellow cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko, in March, 1978, set the then world endurance record of 96 days and 10 hours in space aboard the Salyut 6 station. He first went into space in 1975 as a flight engineer aboard the Soyuz 17 traveling to Salyut 4.

Tass said all systems aboard the craft were functioning normally and the three cosmonauts were feeling well.

The Soviet reports did not say when the cosmonauts will hook up with the Salyut 7 complex, which comprises the space ship and the Soyuz T-13 that took Dzhanibekov and Savinykh into space June 6.

Those two cosmonauts found the space ship drifting out of control with all systems broken down because of an electrical failure.

After undertaking a risky repair mission, the two reportedly have conducted various medical and other experiments.