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

Pushing out a brilliant plume of nearly 5,000-degree exhaust, a test booster for NASA’s Space Launch System fired for more than two minutes Tuesday to verify the upgraded space shuttle-era solid rocket motor is ready to help send astronauts into deep space.

A Russian cosmonaut and his NASA co-pilot, five months after riding out a dramatic launch abort last October, finally made it into orbit Thursday and, along with a NASA astronaut making her first flight, docked with the International Space Station six hours later to boost the lab’s crew back to six.

A high-power Russian satellite designed to deliver broadband Internet connections and relay television and videoconferencing signals fired into orbit Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.