Live coverage: Soyuz crew lands in Kazakhstan

A veteran cosmonaut, a German volcanologist and a Navy test pilot-turned-astronaut undocked from the International Space Station and returned to Earth, descending through low clouds to a jarring touchdown on the frigid steppe of Kazakhstan to close out a 165-day stay in orbit.

An all-new SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fired its engines Friday night on launch pad 40 at Cape Canaveral, the opening act in a busy weekend of SpaceX launch preps leading up to a pair of blastoffs Sunday and Tuesday from California’s Central Coast and Florida’s Space Coast, respectively.

A high-power Russian satellite designed to deliver broadband Internet connections and relay television and videoconferencing signals fired into orbit Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.