Live coverage: Falcon 9 disintegrates after launch

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off from Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39A on Thursday, then its first stage booster touched down on a nearby landing target after sending a U.S. Air Force X-37B spaceplane toward orbit.

A U.S. Army veteran of Operation Desert Storm, a Russian Air Force MiG-29 fighter pilot, and a former flight controller for Russia’s Mir space station arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, with a smooth docking aboard a Soyuz spaceship at 0952 GMT (5:52 a.m. EDT), two days after a successful launch from Kazakhstan.

SpaceX completed the first of two planned Starlink missions from Florida this week. The first launch lifted off from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral on Monday at 2:14 p.m. EDT (1814 UTC).