Video: Time lapse of ATV’s final departure from ISS

Leveraging progress made to build a human-rated space plane for NASA’s commercial crew program, Sierra Nevada Corp. said this week it has offered a cargo-carrying version of the Dream Chaser spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station beginning in 2018.

Russian ground crews working in starkly different environments on the barren steppes of Kazakhstan and in the lush jungles of South America are readying a pair of Soyuz rockets for two launches Thursday, one to resupply the International Space Station, and another to broaden the capacity of SES’s O3b Internet network.

The European Space Agency has reserved an Ariane launcher to send a spacecraft toward Jupiter in May 2022, and the mission’s project manager said Tuesday officials could assign the probe to Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket, assuming the vehicle has a successful debut by the end of 2020.