Live coverage: Soyuz crew lands in Kazakhstan

A veteran Russian cosmonaut, a rookie French flight engineer and a record-setting NASA astronaut making her third trip to the International Space Station are gearing up for launch Thursday aboard an upgraded Soyuz ferry craft, kicking off a two-day flight to the orbital laboratory.

A commercial Cygnus resupply craft that received a new corporate owner while berthed at the International Space Station — thanks to Northrop Grumman’s acquisition of Orbital ATK in June — departed the research complex Sunday. The supply ship was released by Canadarm 2 on the space station at 8:37 a.m. EDT (1237 GMT).

A compact exoplanet observatory built in Europe to help astronomers determine the sizes of distant worlds around other stars is scheduled for launch Wednesday from French Guiana aboard a Soyuz rocket.