Live coverage: Veteran three-man crew docks with space station

Confident in technical and procedural fixes implemented since a launch in August left two Galileo satellites in the wrong orbit, officials with Europe’s navigation program say Friday’s liftoff of two identical craft on a Soyuz rocket will try to fill the same slots in the fleet as targeted by last year’s failed mission.

A NASA astronaut and two cosmonaut crewmates strapped into their Soyuz ferry ship Monday evening, undocked from the International Space Station and plunged to an on-target landing on the frigid steppe of Kazakhstan early Tuesday to wrap up an eight-month mission.

While a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship closed in on the International Space Station early Sunday, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft blasted off from frigid Kazakhstan, boosting a fresh three-man crew into orbit for a two-day flight to the lab complex.