Live coverage: International crew lands in Kazakhstan

European engineers who developed a small satellite hitching a ride to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX supply ship Monday are gearing up for a first-of-a-kind experiment to examine ways to snare a chunk of space junk and tug it back to Earth.

After years of delays, the core stage for NASA’s first Space Launch System moon rocket rolled out of its New Orleans factory Wednesday, heading for a NASA site in Mississippi for a test-firing before engineers hope to ship the rocket to its Florida launch base by this fall.

An impromptu repair job Thursday appears to have stopped a leak in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked to the International Space Station, and the crew was back on its normal schedule Friday carrying out research and making preparations for the arrival of a Japanese cargo ship next month.