Video: Scott Kelly’s in-flight news conference before landing

Hauling nearly three tons of supplies, hardware and experiments, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket shot into orbit Monday from Cape Canaveral, with a previously-flown Dragon cargo carrier riding a reused first stage booster to kick off a nearly two-day journey to the International Space Station.

An unpiloted Russian Soyuz spacecraft, with a humanoid robot in the commander’s seat instead of a cosmonaut, is scheduled for liftoff late Wednesday (U.S. time) from Kazakhstan on a test flight to verify the spaceship’s compatibility with the new-generation Soyuz-2.1a rocket set to begin launching crews to the International Space Station next year.

A Russian cosmonaut, a NASA flight engineer and a Japanese physician-astronaut strapped into their Soyuz ferry ship early Sunday, undocked from the International Space Station and plunged back to Earth, landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out a 168-day mission.