Live coverage: Vega rocket launches with LISA Pathfinder

Three days after a trio of space station fliers returned to Earth, a Russian cosmonaut, a German flight engineer and a NASA physician-astronaut rocketed into orbit aboard another Soyuz spacecraft Wednesday, setting off after the lab complex in the first step of a two-day rendezvous.

The first of up to 22 launches on Arianespace’s schedule in 2020 successfully delivered a commercial European broadband satellite and an Indian communications payload to orbit Thursday using a heavy-lift Ariane 5 rocket.

Hardware problems that cropped up earlier this month on the Hubble Space Telescope, now approaching the 31st anniversary of its launch, are the latest signs the observatory is showing its age.