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

Check out photos of Wednesday’s middle-of-the-night launch of a three-man crew from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, kicking off a six-hour journey from Kazakhstan to the International Space Station.

Running several days late after a series of technical and weather delays, a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 6:17 a.m. PST (9:17 a.m. EST; 1417 GMT) with the Spanish-owned Paz radar observation satellite and two prototype payloads for SpaceX’s planned Starlink broadband satellite network.

President Trump plans to visit the Kennedy Space Center in Florida next week to view the first launch of astronauts into orbit from U.S. soil in nearly a decade, according to White House officials.