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

A Soyuz rocket carrying a Russian commander, a NASA co-pilot and a United Arab Emirates guest cosmonaut blasted off from Kazakhstan Wednesday, chased down the International Space Station and glided in for a picture-perfect docking, kicking off an unprecedented end-of-year schedule that includes up to a dozen spacewalks.

Backed by a fresh capital infusion and regulatory rights to a valued slice of satellite communications spectrum, the space-based Internet company OneWeb has contracted with Arianespace and Virgin Galactic to deploy hundreds of refrigerator-sized spacecraft around Earth.

A package of five satellites, including an Italian radar reconnaissance craft and a European Space Agency exoplanet science probe, soared into orbit Wednesday from French Guiana aboard a Russian-made Soyuz rocket.