Photos: Atlas 5 rocket aims for International Space Station

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).

A secret Chinese military payload, believed to be a surveillance satellite, successfully flew into space Sunday aboard a Long March 4C rocket on China’s 39th and final scheduled orbital launch attempt of the year.

A Chinese Long March 4C rocket launched Tuesday with a new polar-orbiting weather observatory named Fengyun 3D, replacing an aging satellite for the China Meteorological Administration.