Live coverage: New crew arrives at International Space Station

Russian commander Sergey Prokopyev, German flight engineer Alexander Gerst, and NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor closed out a nearly 197-day space mission with a landing in Kazakhstan aboard their Soyuz MS-09 crew carry ship at 0502 GMT (12:02 a.m. EST) Thursday. The Soyuz crew undocked from the International Space Station at 0140 GMT (8:40 p.m. EST Wednesday) to begin their return to Earth.

SpaceX has launched a Falcon 9 rocket with a previously-flown first stage booster carrying the SES 12 communications satellite, an all-electric, multi-band video and data relay platform to serve the Asia-Pacific region. Liftoff from Cape Canaveral occurred at 12:45 a.m. EDT (0445 GMT), and SpaceX did not plan to recover the first stage.

SpaceX launched its first mission of the year Monday at 9:19 p.m. EST (0219 GMT Tuesday), when a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral with SpaceX’s third batch of 60 Starlink broadband satellites.