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

Astronauts Drew Morgan and Christina Koch floated back outside the International Space Station Friday and completed work to replace six aging batteries with three more powerful units in one of the lab’s eight solar power circuits. Three more spacewalks are planned over the next two weeks to replace another six batteries in an adjacent circuit.

Kirk Shireman, NASA’s program manager for the International Space Station, is retiring from the space agency later this month to take a position in private industry.

Six years after launching for the first time, a Russian Angara A5 heavy-lift rocket took off on its second test flight Monday and successfully delivered a dummy payload into orbit.