Photos: Atlas 5 rocket aims for International Space Station

This media briefing comes as NASA is potentially within a week of making its final decision on how to bring the Starliner CFT crew home. The agency is debating on if Starliner is determined to be safe or if NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmroe and Sunita “Sunni” Williams will return on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Two satellites destined to join China’s Beidou network successfully launched Thursday aboard a Long March 3B rocket, the first two of up to 18 new Chinese navigation craft scheduled for deployment this year.

Veteran Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, more than three months into his fifth trip into orbit, has passed countryman Sergey Krikalev’s mark of 803 days of cumulative time in space.