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

Astronauts Drew Morgan and Christina Koch floated back outside the International Space Station Friday and completed work to replace six aging batteries with three more powerful units in one of the lab’s eight solar power circuits. Three more spacewalks are planned over the next two weeks to replace another six batteries in an adjacent circuit.

A Soyuz booster vaulted into a sunset sky over French Guiana on Wednesday evening, arcing north from the jungle spaceport in South America with six satellites to inaugurate OneWeb’s global broadband network.

Russia’s space agency has decided to cut the size of its crew complement on the International Space Station beginning in March 2017 to reduce operating costs until a new Russian science lab is activated on the complex in early 2018, officials confirmed this week.