Live coverage: Soyuz sends Russian and two Americans to space station

An unpiloted Russian Soyuz spacecraft, with a humanoid robot in the commander’s seat instead of a cosmonaut, is scheduled for liftoff late Wednesday (U.S. time) from Kazakhstan on a test flight to verify the spaceship’s compatibility with the new-generation Soyuz-2.1a rocket set to begin launching crews to the International Space Station next year.

The launch of the next crew to China’s Tiangong space station late Monday (U.S. time) added three astronauts to the population of humans in space, which reached a record number of 17 people in orbit — six Chinese citizens, five Americans, three Russians, two Saudis, and one Emirati astronaut.

Watch a replay of the landing of Oleg Novitskiy and Thomas Pesquet inside the Soyuz MS-03 crew capsule on the Kazakh stepped Friday, ending their six-and-a-half month expedition on the International Space Station.