Live coverage: Soyuz crew capsule departs station, lands in Kazakhstan

The Russian Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft and booster rocket were rolled out to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Monday in preparation for liftoff Thursday at 3:20 p.m. EST (2020 GMT) on a two-day trek to the International Space Station.

U.S. and Russian vehicles ferrying crews and cargo will continue traveling to and from the International Space Station this month, sustaining the orbiting lab in its 20th year of continuous human occupation amid an escalating pandemic on Earth.

Two astronauts ventured outside the International Space Station Friday for the first of four spacewalks to repair a $2 billion cosmic ray detector, breezing through work to prep the device for invasive surgery to splice in new coolant pumps and extend the instrument’s life probing the composition of the universe.