Live coverage: Station crew lands after 11 months in orbit

NASA has added extra safeguards to the agency’s standard pre-launch quarantine protocol to protect astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley from the coronavirus and other contagions in the final two weeks before their scheduled May 27 launch on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Three space station crew members — two short timers completing a 10-day flight and a veteran cosmonaut who has logged a world record 879 days aloft over five missions — undocked from the International Space Station and returned to Earth Friday, landing safely on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out a problem-free flight.

A Soyuz rocket arrived at a historic launch pad in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, where ground crews lifted the booster vertical to begin final preparations for liftoff Thursday with two Americans and one Russian heading for the International Space Station.