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

Astronauts Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins ventured outside the lab complex Friday for a long-awaited spacewalk to attach a new docking mechanism, the first of two that will be used by U.S. crew ferry ships being built by Boeing and SpaceX to carry astronauts to and from the outpost, ending NASA’s sole reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

A Soyuz rocket lifted off Friday from a jungle spaceport in South America with two satellites for Europe’s Galileo navigation network. The four-hour launch sequence began with blastoff at 2146 GMT (5:46 p.m. EDT).

Russia says a design bug from the pairing of a Progress spacecraft with an upgraded version of the venerable Soyuz launcher led to the loss of a resupply mission bound for the International Space Station on April 28.