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

Rising atop a column of rocket exhaust lighting up the Kazakh steppe, a Russian Proton booster took off Thursday with a commercial communications satellite for AsiaSat.

NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken returned to Earth Sunday with an on-target splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico at 2:48 p.m. EDT (1848 GMT) Sunday. The astronauts completed a two-month stay on the International Space Station on a test flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.

International Launch Services, facing headwinds in a commercial launch market now largely shaped by billionaires and satellite miniaturization, has touted a new relationship with the Russian space agency and Glavkosmos as a means to drive down Proton rocket prices, make Russian space industry more friendly to the commercial market, and diversify its offerings.