Live coverage: Soyuz crew lands in Kazakhstan

Former astronaut Piers Sellers, a British-born climate scientist who flew on three space shuttle missions to help construct the International Space Station, has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 61.

Mission managers Tuesday granted approval to proceed with Wednesday’s rollout of the Atlas 5 rocket and Thursday’s launch to deliver the commercial Cygnus cargo ship into orbit to resupply the International Space Station.

A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off and shot into orbit Wednesday, carrying a Russian cosmonaut and two NASA astronauts, all veteran space fliers, on a two-day flight to the International Space Station.