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

A Russian-built Soyuz booster lifted off Friday from the European-run spaceport in French Guiana, carrying four new broadband Internet satellites to orbit to join the O3b network owned by SES. Launch occurred at 1710:06 GMT (12:10:06 p.m. EST).

Two astronauts floated outside the International Space Station Sunday for the first in a series of spacewalks to upgrade the lab’s aging solar power system, assembling a support fixture that eventually will hold a new solar blanket.

One week after a Russian Soyuz spacecraft departed the International Space Station and brought three crew members back to Earth, another Soyuz carrying a veteran cosmonaut and a first-time NASA flight engineer is ready for launch Thursday on a quick four-orbit flight to the orbiting lab complex.