Live video of the docking of a Progress cargo ship with the space station

SpaceX fired up a Falcon 9 booster at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad Wednesday in advance of a space station resupply launch Dec. 12, returning the pad to service after a rocket explosion there last year.

Closing out 52 days at the International Space Station, an automated Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo craft left the research outpost Sunday to climb into a higher orbit for deployment of six CubeSats and further engineering experiments, before de-orbiting over Pacific Ocean later this month.

A high-power Russian satellite designed to deliver broadband Internet connections and relay television and videoconferencing signals fired into orbit Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.