Live coverage: Soyuz test flight concludes with landing in Kazakhstan

An Antares rocket is being prepared for launch for the first time in two years after emerging from the Horizontal Integration Facility at Wallops Island, Virginia, on Thursday evening for a one-mile trip to the launch pad.

Veteran Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, flanked by Japanese flight engineer Kimiya Yui and NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, boarded a Soyuz landing craft Friday and made a parachute-assisted touchdown in Kazakhstan at 1312 GMT (8:12 a.m. EST) to close out more than 141 days on the International Space Station.

NASA has a builder to construct a five-ton spacecraft to catch up with the aging Landsat 7 Earth observation satellite and refuel it in 2020, employing robotic tools mastered in years of rehearsals on the International Space Station.