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

Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin floated outside the International Space Station Wednesday, unbolted an experiment airlock from the Rassvet docking compartment and then connected it to Russia’s Nauka multi-purpose laboratory module in a 7-hour, 11-minute excursion.

An Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo craft departed the International Space Station on Wednesday, heading for a higher orbit to deploy 14 CubeSats and an eventual de-orbit burn to dispose of more than 6,200 pounds of trash and other unneeded equipment packed by the station’s crew.

In the final hours of a 340-day mission, Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko said goodbye to their crewmates and closed the hatch to the International Space Station on Tuesday, heading for a parachute-assisted touchdown in Kazakhstan a few hours later.