A powerhouse Internet-from-space communications satellite will be launched from the Cape next year atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, officials announced Wednesday.

Technicians began the painstaking work of assembling a powerful Atlas 5 rocket today, a launcher that will deploy an advanced satellite to substantially improve U.S. weather forecasting.

Soyuz commander Alexei Ovchinin, flight engineer Oleg Skripochka and outgoing space station skipper Jeff Williams returned to Earth on Tuesday with a parachute-assisted touchdown in Kazakhstan. Their Soyuz TMA-20M capsule undocked from the station at 2151 GMT (5:51 p.m. EDT) and landed at 0113 GMT (9:13 p.m. EDT).