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

Fifty years to the day after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon, a NASA astronaut, an Italian flight engineer and a Russian commander geared up for launch aboard a Soyuz spacecraft Saturday on a six-hour flight to the International Space Station.

A Soyuz rocket is sitting on a historic launch pad in Kazakhstan after a railroad journey at sunrise Wednesday positioned the crew ferry craft for liftoff Friday with a three-man crew destined for the International Space Station, including two spaceflight veterans who will spend nearly one year in orbit.

A Proton rocket fired away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, kicking off a nearly seven-hour flight that concluded with the high-altitude delivery of a new Russian communications satellite into orbit.