Live coverage: H-2A rocket blasts off with latest Japanese weather satellite

Two American astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut boarded their Soyuz MS-06 landing craft for a homecoming Tuesday night, U.S. time, concluding 168 days in orbit. The trio undocked from the International Space Station at 5:08 p.m. EST (2208 GMT), and landed on the snowy steppe of Kazakhstan at 9:31 p.m. EST (0231 GMT Wednesday).

High-tech cameras made in Indiana will soon be scanning across Asia, Australia, the Americas and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to give weather forecasters an unrivaled minute-by-minute glimpse of the development and movement of hurricanes, typhoons and storm systems.

The last flight of the single-core variant of United Launch Alliance’s Delta 4 rocket lifted off at 9:06 a.m. EDT (1306 GMT) Thursday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The 207-foot-tall launcher carried a GPS navigation satellite into orbit for the U.S. Air Force.