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

NASA has announced that veteran astronauts Joe Acaba and Ricky Arnold will launch on nearly six-month expeditions aboard the International Space Station starting in September and in March 2018, filling seats aboard Russian Soyuz spaceships recently acquired in a commercial arrangement with Boeing.

The Trump administration is requesting $25.2 billion for NASA in fiscal 2021, a 12 percent increase that includes $3.3 billion to kickstart development of a human-rated lander for the Artemis moon program. Nearly half of the budget request, $12.3 billion, is devoted to new and ongoing projects focused on the return to the moon and eventual flights to Mars.

A Soyuz rocket is standing on a launch pad at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East for liftoff Sunday with the next 36 satellites for OneWeb’s internet network, the sixth Soyuz mission dedicated to the commercial broadband constellation.