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

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be geared up for the long haul when they launch from the Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft later this month, but they won’t know exactly how long they will be in orbit until they are already aboard the International Space Station.

While Arianespace missions from French Guiana have been suspended in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the company says a Soyuz rocket launch from Kazakhstan is set to go ahead Saturday with 34 more OneWeb broadband satellites.

Launching for the 20th time from the jungle of South America, a Russian-built Soyuz booster rocketed into orbit Wednesday with a new eye in the sky for the French military, the first in a series of upgrades planned for the country’s defense satellites over the next five years.