Live coverage: Space station crew safely returns to Earth

A Russian Soyuz booster arrived at its launch pad Sunday in Kazakhstan for two days of final countdown preparations ahead of liftoff with a Russian cosmonaut and two U.S. astronauts Tuesday on the way to the International Space Station.

A Russian Proton rocket rolled out to its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, riding a specially-built rail car with Europe’s ExoMars mission bound for the red planet.

Mission controllers plan to unlock the blades on NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter and spin them up to more than 2,000 rpm for a test later this week, a bit of “calisthenics”  before the rotorcraft’s first flight in the atmosphere of Mars as soon as this weekend, the helicopter’s operations lead said Monday.