Video: Soyuz MS-01 leaves the space station for landing

Top officials from NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, could decide soon to commit to keeping the International Space Station staffed and flying through at least 2028, four years after the research lab’s current retirement date.

Two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut flying to the International Space Station for a fourth time lifted off Friday at 2126 GMT (5:26 p.m. EDT) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The trio reached the orbiting research complex less than six hours later at 0309 GMT (11:09 p.m. EDT).

A Russian satellite reportedly designed to track enemy submarines and a spacecraft to help calibrate ground-based military radars lifted off Saturday aboard a modified Soyuz rocket, but one of the payloads apparently failed to deploy from the launcher’s upper stage, according to Russian media.