Live coverage: Station crew lands in Kazakhstan

Three days after a trio of space station fliers returned to Earth, a Russian cosmonaut, a German flight engineer and a NASA physician-astronaut rocketed into orbit aboard another Soyuz spacecraft Wednesday, setting off after the lab complex in the first step of a two-day rendezvous.

Veteran Soyuz commander Yuri Malenchenko, outgoing space station skipper Tim Kopra and British astronaut Tim Peake departed the International Space Station early Saturday aboard the Soyuz TMA-19M capsule and landed in Kazakhstan at 0915 GMT (5:15 a.m. EDT).

The last of Japan’s first series of HTV supply ships departed the International Space Station on Tuesday with several tons of trash, old batteries, and unneeded equipment, heading for a destructive re-entry before the debut of an upgraded cargo freighter design.