Live coverage: Proton rocket blasts off with Astra 2G

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.

For the second time this year, SpaceX has launched a commercial communications satellite for Tokyo-based SKY Perfect JSAT Corp. A Falcon 9 rocket blasted off at 1:26 a.m. EDT (0526 GMT) from Cape Canaveral with the JCSAT 16 satellite to relay data and video across Japan and the Asia-Pacific. The Falcon 9’s first stage booster nailed a landing on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean a few minutes later.

SpaceX and SES, owner of a 5.8-ton commercial telecom satellite poised for launch from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday, struck a deal to tweak the Falcon 9 rocket’s launch profile to give the SES 9 spacecraft a stronger push toward its operating post more than 22,000 miles above Earth.