Live coverage: Japanese cargo craft departs International Space Station

An unmanned cargo freighter carrying nearly four tons of supplies and science, launched and operated commercially for NASA, blasted off from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday atop an Atlas 5 rocket bound for the International Space Station.

A Russian Soyuz booster arrived at its launch pad on the Kazakh steppe Sunday, the last stop before liftoff Wednesday with a three-person crew bound for the International Space Station.

Running a day late after aborting a rendezvous to resolve a navigation glitch, SpaceX’s Dragon cargo craft made a smooth final approach to the International Space Station on Thursday, floating in range of the research lab’s robot arm for capture to deliver 2.7 tons of supplies and research experiments.