Live coverage: Vega rocket launches with LISA Pathfinder

Two days after launch from Kazakhstan, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a crew of three wrapped up a problem-free rendezvous Friday, docking at the International Space Station’s Earth-facing Rassvet port less than a week after three other crew members departed.

The European Space Agency’s Aeolus winds observatory is set for liftoff aboard a Vega rocket to kick off a three-year mission to measure global wind profiles from an orbit nearly 200 miles (320 kilometers) above Earth.

A decommissioned missile originally built in Russia to deliver nuclear weapons to intercontinental targets in the United States vaulted out of a vertical canister Friday and fired into space with a European satellite to monitor global air pollution.