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

Officials from NASA, Orbital ATK, Wallops Flight Facility and the Commonwealth of Virginia preview Sunday night’s flight of the Antares rocket during the pre-launch news conference held on the eve of liftoff.

Boeing and SpaceX hope to launch commercial crew ferry ships on long-awaited test flights later this year, but both companies face major challenges getting the spacecraft certified before late 2019 when seats aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft will no longer be easily available for NASA space station crews, officials told lawmakers Wednesday.

These video replays show the liftoff of the Soyuz rocket carrying Oleg Kononenko, David Saint-Jacques and Anne McClain away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, toward a rendezvous with the International Space Station around six hours later.