Photos: Atlas 5 rocket aims for International Space Station

The next three-man crew to live on China’s Tiangong space station will launch Monday night on a Long March rocket, heading for a half-year expedition on the orbiting outpost to replace an outgoing team of astronauts set to return to Earth this weekend.

Slung under the belly of a specially-equipped carrier airplane, a Northrop Grumman Pegasus rocket took off Wednesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a two-day trek to a remote U.S. military test site in the Pacific Ocean, where crews will ready the air-dropped booster for launch of a NASA research satellite next week.

Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station commanded an approaching unpiloted Soyuz spacecraft to abort its docking Saturday after the ship’s automated rendezvous system ran into trouble, leaving ground teams assessing what went wrong and whether to attempt another link-up in orbit.