Live coverage: Soyuz crew lands in Kazakhstan

The operation comes a week after NASA conducted a so-called ‘confidence test’ on Feb. 12, which was the process of loading some liquid hydrogen on the rocket’s core stage.

Virgin Galactic launched its suborbital spaceplane “Unity” on its first crewed flight in two years Thursday, carrying two pilots and four company astronauts to the edge of space in a final test flight before paying customers begin suborbital jaunts in June.

A new satellite joined Russia’s Glonass navigation fleet Saturday with a successful launch on top of a Soyuz rocket into an orbit nearly 12,000 miles above Earth.