Live coverage: Soyuz crew lands in Kazakhstan

Critical tests are on tap this weekend to confirm Boeing’s Starliner capsule can safety carry its two-person crew back to Earth despite unexpected helium leaks and degraded maneuvering thrusters, officials said Thursday.

Clad in pressurized spacesuits, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Prokopyev used knives and scissors to slice through insulation and a debris shield on a Soyuz spaceship set to return to Earth next week, finally reaching the capsule’s metallic hull to examine the site of an air leak plugged in August.

This will be the first Cargo Dragon flight featuring a modified trunk that allows it to perform multiple orbital boosts of the International Space Station. SpaceX is targeting liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 2:45 a.m. EDT (0645 UTC).