Live coverage: International Space Station crew lands in Kazakhstan

A Russian Soyuz rocket has reached its last stop before liftoff Friday with two Russian cosmonauts and veteran NASA flight engineer Jeff Williams, who is slated to break the record for the most cumulative time spent in space by a U.S. astronaut.

Heading for a destructive re-entry over the South Pacific with several tons of trash, Japan’s fifth HTV cargo craft departed the International Space Station on Monday after overcoming a last-minute snag in the lab’s robotics system.

Europe’s first mission to Mercury, a quartet of Galileo navigation spacecraft, the world’s first global winds observatory, and a new European weather satellite have arrived at an equatorial launch base in French Guiana in preparation for launches in the coming months.