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

Europe’s MetOp-C weather satellite launched aboard a Russian-built Soyuz rocket toward polar orbit Tuesday night from French Guiana, joining an international fleet of meteorological observatories critical for global weather forecasting. Liftoff occurred at 7:47 p.m. EST Tuesday (0047 GMT Wednesday).

A Soyuz rocket is standing on the launch pad in Kazakhstan used on Yuri Gagarin’s historic first human spaceflight in 1961, ready to send three people toward the International Space Station.

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).