Live coverage: Vega rocket launches with LISA Pathfinder

A Russian Proton rocket launched at 0345 GMT Thursday (11:45 p.m. EDT Wednesday) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with the EchoStar 21 communications satellite, a hefty 7.6-ton telecommunications station designed to support a mobile network in Europe. Managed by U.S.-based International Launch Services, the mission will take more than nine hours to deliver EchoStar 21 into a geostationary transfer orbit using five burns of the Breeze M upper stage engine.

Touching down after 340 days in orbit, astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko have returned to Earth from the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz crew capsule commanded by Sergey Volkov. Landing in Kazakhstan occurred at 0426 GMT Wednesday (11:26 p.m. EST Tuesday).

This time lapse video shows Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle backing away from the International Space Station for the last time Saturday.