Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Soyuz rocket from French Guiana with Europe’s Sentinel 1B radar Earth observation satellite, France’s Microscope relativity probe and three CubeSats from Belgium, Italy and Denmark. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.
Two crewmen returned to Earth from the International Space Station on Friday, riding a Russian Soyuz spaceship to a parachute-assisted, rocket-cushioned landing in Kazakhstan to close out more than 196 days in orbit. Oleg Novitskiy and Thomas Pesquet undocked from the station at 1047 GMT (6:47 a.m. EDT) and landed in Kazakhstan at 1410 GMT (10:10 a.m. EDT).
Loaded with mice, plant specimens and the International Space Station’s first espresso machine, a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule arrived at the complex Friday with a fresh delivery of supplies. ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti grappled the spacecraft with the station’s robot arm at 6:55 a.m. EDT (1055 GMT).
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