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

Boeing engineers have completed hotfire testing on a flight-like model of the Starliner crew capsule, clearing a major hurdle before a pad abort test and a demonstration flight to the International Space Station later this summer, Boeing announced Friday.

A scaled-down team of technicians and medical personnel — wearing facial masks as a precaution against the global coronavirus pandemic — met a three-person space station crew on the steppes of Kazakhstan Friday after their landing aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The Antares rocket, Orbital ATK’s medium-class booster now with modern RD-181 engines, launches at 7:45 p.m. EDT (2345 GMT) from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on the eastern shore of Virginia.