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

Russia sent a spy satellite into orbit aboard a Soyuz rocket Feb. 2 from a snowy launch pad at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, setting off on a mission to detect, locate, and characterize foreign military radio signals.

A Christmas Eve reading from the book of Genesis by the Apollo 8 astronauts — commander Frank Borman, lunar module pilot Bill Anders and command module pilot Jim Lovell — from lunar orbit in 1968.

Reid Wiseman, a veteran U.S. Navy test pilot and former chief of NASA’s astronaut corps, will lead the four-person crew assigned to the Artemis 2 mission to carry people to the vicinity of the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. Wiseman says he views the crew’s job as making sure NASA’s Orion spacecraft is ready for more demanding missions later this decade to support moon landings and assembly of a space station called the Gateway in lunar orbit.