Live coverage: Three Chinese astronauts return to Earth

Astronauts Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer put on spacesuits Friday and headed outside the International Space Station for several repair and maintenance tasks, but the duo only completed part of their originally planned work after a leaky cooling umbilical delayed the start of their spacewalk.

Russia’s Proton rocket took off on its first launch of the year Sunday with a commercial satellite to expand Inmarsat’s next-generation mobile communications network. Liftoff occurred at 1231 GMT (7:31 a.m. EST), and it took more than 15 hours to place the Inmarsat spacecraft in the correct orbit.

After completing a dress rehearsal for launch day over the weekend, the four astronauts gearing up for liftoff Thursday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket are in good spirits and spending time with their families in Florida before leaving the planet for a six-month expedition on the International Space Station. Forecasters with the U.S. Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron predict an 80% chance of acceptable weather for launch early Thursday.