Live coverage: SpaceX crew capsule docks with space station

For the second time in less than a week, astronauts will leave their quarters inside the International Space Station on Thursday to outfit a relocated docking adapter to eventually receive Boeing and SpaceX commercial crew capsules.

A Russian cosmonaut, a NASA astronaut and an Italian wrapping up her first space flight boarded a Russian Soyuz ferry craft early Thursday, undocked from the International Space Station and plunged back to Earth, landing safely on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out an extended 200-day mission.

Flying for the first time this year, a Proton rocket streaked into space Thursday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with two Russian Express communications satellites that will beam television, radio and broadband signals across the country.