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

Veteran Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, flanked by Japanese flight engineer Kimiya Yui and NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, boarded a Soyuz landing craft Friday and made a parachute-assisted touchdown in Kazakhstan at 1312 GMT (8:12 a.m. EST) to close out more than 141 days on the International Space Station.

A three-man crew donned pressure suits, strapped into a Russian Soyuz space capsule and rode a rocket into orbit Friday, starting a record-setting expedition on the International Space Station that — for two of the crew members — will last for 342 days.

Boeing’s first Starliner spacecraft designed to fly to the International Space Station rolled out of a converted space shuttle hangar before dawn Thursday.