Live coverage: Proton rocket blasts off with Astra 2G

Sporting a new blue and white paint scheme to mark the upcoming 60th anniversary of the first human spaceflight, a Russian Soyuz rocket loaded with 38 international satellites has rolled out to its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan ahead of a planned liftoff Saturday.

Veteran Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, flanked by Japanese flight engineer Kimiya Yui and NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, boarded a Soyuz landing craft Friday and made a parachute-assisted touchdown in Kazakhstan at 1312 GMT (8:12 a.m. EST) to close out more than 141 days on the International Space Station.

Check out photos of Wednesday’s middle-of-the-night launch of a three-man crew from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, kicking off a six-hour journey from Kazakhstan to the International Space Station.