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

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. Launch occurred at 7:19 p.m. PST (10:19 p.m. EST; 0319 GMT).

Japan’s Astro-H mission, an X-ray astronomy observatory designed to shed light on black holes and the unseen structure of the universe, lifted off aboard an H-2A rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center at 0845 GMT (3:45 a.m. EST) Wednesday.

A SpaceX-owned Dragon cargo craft departed the International Space Station at 1011 GMT (6:11 a.m. EDT) Friday, and made a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at 1547 GMT (11:47 a.m. EDT) with more than 3,000 pounds of cargo, research specimens and other hardware.