SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket at 5:37 a.m. PDT (8:37 a.m. EDT; 1237 GMT) Monday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with the third set of 10 new-generation satellites for Iridium’s voice and data relay network. The Falcon 9’s first stage booster successfully landed on a platform in the Pacific Ocean a few minutes after liftoff.

An unpiloted Russian Soyuz spacecraft, with a humanoid robot in the commander’s seat instead of a cosmonaut, is scheduled for liftoff late Wednesday (U.S. time) from Kazakhstan on a test flight to verify the spaceship’s compatibility with the new-generation Soyuz-2.1a rocket set to begin launching crews to the International Space Station next year.

Space station commander Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren carried out a tedious seven-hour 16-minute spacewalk Wednesday, installing cables needed for a new docking mechanism, mounting insulation panels on a physics experiment to improve cooling and lubricating the latching mechanism of the station’s robot arm.