Live coverage: Japanese cargo craft arrives at space station

Russia’s space agency has decided to cut the size of its crew complement on the International Space Station beginning in March 2017 to reduce operating costs until a new Russian science lab is activated on the complex in early 2018, officials confirmed this week.

Fifty years to the day after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon, a NASA astronaut, an Italian flight engineer and a Russian commander blasted off from Kazakhstan Saturday aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, chased down the International Space Station and glided in for a picture-perfect docking.

Russia launched a Progress resupply mission Tuesday heading for the International Space Station with more than 6,000 pounds of fuel, supplies and experiments to support the lab’s six-person crew, and the automated cargo craft sailed to a smooth link-up with the complex less than six hours later.