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

The mission will the fifth flight to space for Peggy Whitson, the American with the most spaceflight experience in history. Liftoff on Wednesday, June 25 is set for 2:31 a.m. EDT (0631 UTC) from Launch Complex 39A.

A Russian cosmonaut, a NASA astronaut and an Italian wrapping up her first space flight boarded a Russian Soyuz ferry craft early Thursday, undocked from the International Space Station and plunged back to Earth, landing safely on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out an extended 200-day mission.

In a mission marking the end of an era, NASA astronaut and former virus hunter Kate Rubins, using NASA’s last currently contracted seat on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, blasts off Wednesday with two cosmonaut crewmates on a flight to the International Space Station.