Live coverage: Soyuz crew capsule arrives at space station

NASA hopes to begin launching astronauts to the space station aboard Boeing and SpaceX capsules in the 2017 timeframe, but managers expect to still send crews up aboard Russian spacecraft as a hedge against problems that could force some astronauts to make an emergency landing.

A veteran Russian cosmonaut, a Japanese flight engineer and a NASA scientist-astronaut undocked from the International Space Station and returned to Earth Saturday, landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out a 115-day mission.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 1:21 p.m. EDT (1721 GMT) with a satellite to replenish the U.S. Air Force’s Global Positioning System navigation network.