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

A European Ariane 5 rocket delivered two commercial communications satellites to orbit Thursday after Arianespace’s ground team lost telemetry from the launcher during its climb into orbit, raising concerns that the mission might have failed. The SES 14 and Al Yah 3 satellites are confirmed in orbit and healthy, but the parameters of their orbits are unknown. Both were heading toward 22,000-mile-high geostationary perches over the equator.

Astronauts Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins ventured outside the lab complex Friday for a long-awaited spacewalk to attach a new docking mechanism, the first of two that will be used by U.S. crew ferry ships being built by Boeing and SpaceX to carry astronauts to and from the outpost, ending NASA’s sole reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

A Russian Proton rocket hauled a U.S.-built, Spanish-owned communications satellite into orbit Monday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, kicking off a 15-year mission to relay video signals and broadband connectivity across a swath of Latin America from Mexico to Patagonia.