Video: Atlas 5 rocket launches space station cargo mission

The Federal Aviation Administration has approved a launch license for SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket set for blastoff Tuesday, giving the U.S. government’s regulatory green light for the heavy-lifter to dispatch Elon Musk’s used electric car on a one-way trip into deep space.

Crew members on the International Space Station over the weekend continued trying to pinpoint the location of a small air leak in the research outpost’s Russian Zvezda service module, one of the oldest sections of the orbiting laboratory.

A commercial Dragon spacecraft glacially approached the International Space Station on Wednesday, allowing a robotic arm controlled by Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai to reach out and grapple the supply ship as it soared 250 miles over Africa, completing SpaceX’s 14th mission to the research complex, and the second by the same capsule.