Live coverage: Japanese asteroid mission blasts off

Seven Japanese and Vietnamese smallsats are set to ride Japan’s solid-fueled Epsilon launcher into orbit at 0050 GMT Friday (7:50 p.m. EST Thursday) on a mission that engineers say will demonstrate the light-class rocket’s ability to accommodate multiple payloads on a single flight.

The commercial Cygnus freighter carrying over 7,000 pounds of food, supplies and science experiments completed a flawless rendezvous with the International Space Station on Saturday morning. It was captured by the robotic arm at 6:51 a.m. EDT (1051 GMT).

A Soyuz rocket carrying Russian commander Sergey Ryzhikov, flight engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, and veteran NASA astronaut Kate Rubins blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 1:45 a.m. EDT (0545 GMT) Wednesday. The Soyuz crew took off on a three-hour express trip to the International Space Station that culminated in a docking at 4:48 a.m. EDT (0848 GMT).