Live coverage: Vega rocket launches with LISA Pathfinder

Fifty years to the day after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon, a NASA astronaut, an Italian flight engineer and a Russian commander geared up for launch aboard a Soyuz spacecraft Saturday on a six-hour flight to the International Space Station.

A three-man space station crew returned to Earth inside a Russian Soyuz capsule, making a parachute-assisted landing on the remote plains of Kazakhstan after 165 days in orbit.

The Ariane 5 rocket’s weekend launch from French Guiana set a weight record and produced stunning imagery as the powerful 180-foot-tall booster soared into space backdropped by the colorful orange hues of sunset on the edge of the Amazon jungle.