A Russian commander, his NASA co-pilot and the first Emirati to fly in space returned to Earth Thursday with a fiery re-entry inside the Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft on the way to an on-target parachute-assisted landing in Kazakhstan at 6:59 a.m. EDT (1059 GMT), a few hours after undocking from the International Space Station.

SpaceX is preparing for the next launch of a Falcon 9 rocket, set for blastoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with the EchoStar 23 television broadcast satellite destined to cover Brazil. The rocket’s static fire test, a major milestone in any SpaceX launch campaign, was performed Thursday.

A commercial Cygnus resupply ship named for Robert H. Lawrence, Jr. — the first African American selected as an astronaut — is awaiting liftoff Sunday evening from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore to begin a 35-hour trip to the International Space Station.