Live coverage: Soyuz crew lands in Kazakhstan

Taking a major step toward an eventual robotic mission to Europa, a moon of Jupiter believed to harbor ice-locked lakes and a vast sub-surface ocean, NASA has selected nine sophisticated instruments for a solar-powered spacecraft designed to find out whether the hidden realm could support life of some sort, agency officials said Tuesday.

NASA commentator Dan Huot has everything you need to know about Russia’s Soyuz space capsule and provides a tour inside the cramped spacecraft, which, since the end of the shuttle program, has been the only way to ferry cosmonauts and astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

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.