Watch our interview with two International Space Station astronauts

Outgoing space station commander Randy Bresnik, joined by Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazanskiy and European Space Agency flight engineer Paolo Nespoli, returned to Earth early Thursday after nearly five months in orbit. Their Soyuz MS-05 capsule undocked from the International Space Station at 12:14 a.m. EST (0514 GMT), and landed on the steppe of Kazakhstan at 3:37 a.m. EST (0837 GMT).

The mission will bring SpaceX close to having 7,000 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit. Liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is set for 5:05 p.m. EST (2205 UTC).

A new four-stage rocket operated by the Chinese launch company Galactic Energy succeeded on its inaugural flight Saturday, delivering a data relay microsatellite to an orbit 300 miles above Earth.