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

NASA astronaut Nick Hague will take the place of Anne McClain on a spacewalk Friday outside the International Space Station, teaming up with crewmate Christina Koch  to continue a series of battery upgrades on an excursion that would have been the first all-female spacewalk in history.

Two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut flying to the International Space Station for a fourth time lifted off Friday at 2126 GMT (5:26 p.m. EDT) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The trio reached the orbiting research complex less than six hours later at 0309 GMT (11:09 p.m. EDT).

Flying without astronauts on a demonstration flight in Earth orbit, a test model of a next-generation Chinese crew capsule lifted off Tuesday on top of a heavy-lift Long March 5B rocket, the same launcher configuration that will loft segments of China’s planned space station.