Live coverage: International crew lands in Kazakhstan

A malfunction during a drop test over Nevada last month for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon program has engineers re-examining the crew capsule’s parachutes, and Boeing has also encountered parachute failures during testing for its commercial crew capsule, a senior NASA official confirmed Wednesday.

A Russian Soyuz booster arrived at its launch pad Sunday in Kazakhstan for two days of final countdown preparations ahead of liftoff with a Russian cosmonaut and two U.S. astronauts Tuesday on the way to the International Space Station.

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket Friday at 5:39 p.m. EDT (2139 GMT). The commercial booster is hauling up the Thaicom 8 television broadcasting satellite from Cape Canaveral. The rocket’s first stage successfully landed on SpaceX’s recovery platform in the Atlantic Ocean.