Live coverage: 400th Proton rocket takes off with Russian satellite

Wrapping up a six-month mission in orbit, three Chinese astronauts departed the Tiangong space station Saturday and landed in the remote Gobi Desert of northwestern China at 6:33 p.m. EDT (2233 UTC).

A powerful Russian Proton booster launched from Kazakhstan at 0931:42 GMT (5:31:42 a.m. EDT) Monday with the first part of a multibillion-dollar Mars mission led by the European Space Agency. An upper stage engine fired four times over 10 hours to send the Mars orbiter and lander away from Earth.

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying two cosmonauts and a veteran NASA astronaut blasted off from Kazakhstan Friday, chased down the International Space Station and glided to a smooth automated docking, boosting the lab’s crew back to six.