Live coverage: Station astronauts wire up new antennas

Continuing a busy week of comings and goings at the International Space Station, a Russian Progress supply ship is set for liftoff at 0709 GMT (3:09 a.m. EDT) Wednesday from Kazakhstan with nearly 5,200 pounds of food, fuel and supplies for the six-person crew on the International Space Station.

In a fiery, dramatic comeback for SpaceX, a Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, streaking into orbit as its booster stage returned to a historic landing on Florida’s Space Coast in a key achievement aimed at slashing the cost of space transportation. Eleven communications satellites for Orbcomm were deployed in orbit in the flight’s prime objective.

The final flight of a Delta 2 rocket, a mainstay of the U.S. launch industry for nearly 30 years, began at 6:02 a.m. PDT (9:02 a.m. EDT; 1302 GMT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with NASA’s ICESat 2 Earth science satellite.