Live coverage: Kennedy Space Center to reopen Friday

Two crewmen returned to Earth from the International Space Station on Friday, riding a Russian Soyuz spaceship to a parachute-assisted, rocket-cushioned landing in Kazakhstan to close out more than 196 days in orbit. Oleg Novitskiy and Thomas Pesquet undocked from the station at 1047 GMT (6:47 a.m. EDT) and landed in Kazakhstan at 1410 GMT (10:10 a.m. EDT).

Get a preview of Thursday’s United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket flight in these video highlights packages from previous missions by the big booster for NASA and the National Reconnaissance Office from Cape Canaveral in Florida and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 rocket was hydraulically hoisted vertical Sunday morning at launch pad 39A, less than 12 hours before a scheduled blastoff with the Intelsat 35e communications satellite.