Live coverage: International Space Station crew lands in Kazakhstan

Continuing support of the International Space Station amid the coronavirus pandemic, Russian teams transferred a Soyuz rocket to a launch pad in Kazakhstan on Wednesday in preparation for liftoff with a Progress resupply freighter.

NASA hopes to begin launching astronauts to the space station aboard Boeing and SpaceX capsules in the 2017 timeframe, but managers expect to still send crews up aboard Russian spacecraft as a hedge against problems that could force some astronauts to make an emergency landing.

Arianespace launched an Ariane 5 rocket on its sixth and final flight of the year at 2037 GMT (3:37 p.m. EST) Tuesday, blasting off from Kourou, French Guiana, with India’s heaviest-ever satellite and a South Korean weather satellite equipped with a U.S.-made imaging camera.