Cygnus OA-6: What’s onboard?

Towering more than 20 stories tall, the 8-million-pound mobile gantry at the Atlas 5 rocket’s launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, was retracted into position late Friday for liftoff of NASA’s InSight mission to Mars.

One week after a Russian Soyuz spacecraft departed the International Space Station and brought three crew members back to Earth, another Soyuz carrying a veteran cosmonaut and a first-time NASA flight engineer is ready for launch Thursday on a quick four-orbit flight to the orbiting lab complex.

The International Space Station received more than 2.5 tons of fresh supplies and experiments Sunday with the arrival of a commercial Cygnus cargo vessel after an automated laser-guided rendezvous.