Live coverage: International crew lands in Kazakhstan

A Russian Soyuz rocket rolled out to a launch pad in Kazakhstan early Thursday in preparation for liftoff Saturday with a Russian commander, Italian flight engineer and U.S. astronaut heading for the International Space Station.

Astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir floated back outside the International Space Station Wednesday for history’s second all-female spacewalk, installing two powerful new lithium-ion batteries on the far left end of the lab’s solar power truss.

NASA hopes to begin launching astronauts to the space station aboard Boeing and SpaceX capsules in the 2017 timeframe, but managers expect to still send crews up aboard Russian spacecraft as a hedge against problems that could force some astronauts to make an emergency landing.