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

An all-new SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fired its engines Friday night on launch pad 40 at Cape Canaveral, the opening act in a busy weekend of SpaceX launch preps leading up to a pair of blastoffs Sunday and Tuesday from California’s Central Coast and Florida’s Space Coast, respectively.

A veteran cosmonaut, a German volcanologist and a Navy test pilot-turned-astronaut undocked from the International Space Station and returned to Earth, descending through low clouds to a jarring touchdown on the frigid steppe of Kazakhstan to close out a 165-day stay in orbit.

A miniature cargo return vehicle carried aboard a Japanese supply ship splashed down in the Pacific Ocean earlier this month in the first test of a new capsule to bring home experiment samples from the International Space Station.