A three-man crew successfully blasted off to the International Space Station Thursday, footage on NASA television showed, leaving behind a planet overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic. Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner of Russia's Roscosmos space agency and NASA's Chris Cassidy left at 0805 GMT from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where COVID-19 has caused changes to pre-launch protocol. cr/jbr/wdb