Live coverage: Falcon 9 rocket launches, and lands, at Cape Canaveral

The head of NASA’s Human Landing System program sat down with Spaceflight Now to discuss the progress of getting humans back to the Moon for the first time since 1972.

A Russian Proton rocket lifted off Thursday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with the AsiaSat 9 satellite destined to provide television broadcast, video networking and data delivery services over the Asia-Pacific region. Launch occurred at 1852:16 GMT (2:52:16 p.m. EDT), beginning a series of maneuvers expected to last nine hours before AsiaSat 9 is deployed from the rocket.

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).