Live coverage: Ariane 5 rocket soars with Sky Muster, Arsat 2

A three-man crew led by six-time space flier Yuri Malenchenko rode a Soyuz rocket into orbit Tuesday, speeding away from a Kazakh launch pad on a six-hour chase of the International Space Station. Docking occurred at 1733 GMT (12:33 p.m. EST).

European engineers test-fired the world’s most powerful present-day single-segment solid rocket booster Monday in French Guiana, clearing a major development hurdle for the Vega-C and Ariane 6 launchers set for debuts in 2019 and 2020.

Russian commander Anton Shkaplerov, NASA flight engineer Scott Tingle and Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai docked with the International Space Station Tuesday at 3:39 a.m. EST (0839 GMT), two days after blastoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.