Live coverage: Delta 2 launches

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket Friday at 5:39 p.m. EDT (2139 GMT). The commercial booster is hauling up the Thaicom 8 television broadcasting satellite from Cape Canaveral. The rocket’s first stage successfully landed on SpaceX’s recovery platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

United Launch Alliance will salvage the main engines through a mid-air recovery plan and reuse them again aboard the company’s new Vulcan rocket, saving 90 percent in booster propulsion costs, the company announced Monday.

A U.S.-Russian-Italian space crew closed out a 199-day expedition on the International Space Station with a parachute-assisted landing Thursday on the steppe of Kazakhstan. Touchdown of the Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft occurred at 1343 GMT (9:43 a.m. EDT).