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

A Russian Soyuz rocket thundered to life with a burst of flame and shot away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Wednesday carrying an international crew of three aloft on a six-hour flight to the International Space Station.

SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 rocket arrived at Kennedy Space Center’s pad 39A on Thursday for a hold-down engine firing ahead of launch next week with the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane. The brief engine ignition occurred at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT).

Astronauts Steve Bowen and Woody Hoburg suited up and floated outside the International Space Station Friday for a spacewalk to install and unroll an upgraded solar array wing delivered to the complex earlier this week by a SpaceX Cargo Dragon supply ship.