Q&A with Mark Mulqueen, Boeing’s space station program manager

There was a groundbreaking Friday at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 to start building the astronaut access tower to board Boeing’s CST-100 capsules atop United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rockets.

Russian Soyuz commander Alexander Misurkin and two U.S. astronauts — flight engineers Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba — lifted off Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The trio began their six-hour journey to the International Space Station with a launch aboard a Soyuz rocket at 2117 GMT (5:17 p.m. EDT), and docking occurred at 0255 GMT (10:55 p.m. EDT).

A Russian resupply and refueling freighter loaded with 2.7 tons of cargo, propellant, water and oxygen for the International Space Station is in position on a launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for liftoff Friday aboard a Soyuz booster.