Live coverage: International crew lands in Kazakhstan

A Russian cosmonaut, a NASA astronaut and an Italian wrapping up her first space flight boarded a Russian Soyuz ferry craft early Thursday, undocked from the International Space Station and plunged back to Earth, landing safely on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out an extended 200-day mission.

Astronauts Randy Bresnik and Mark Vande Hei headed outside the International Space Station Thursday on a spacewalk to replace one end of the lab’s Canadian-built robotic arm, a changeout that engineers say will restore the device to full capability.

Two days after a dramatic docking abort, an unpiloted Russian Soyuz spacecraft glided in for a picture-perfect link up with the International Space Station late Monday, using a different port the second time around and in the process confirming the problem Saturday was with faulty rendezvous equipment in the original docking port.