Photos: Dragon completes rendezvous with the station

For the second time in less than 24 hours, a robotic resupply freighter departed Earth Friday for the International Space Station, this time aboard a Russian Soyuz booster launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Follow the key events of the Falcon 9 rocket’s ascent into space from Cape Canaveral with the Eutelsat 115 West B and ABS 3A communications satellite.

Boeing and SpaceX hope to launch commercial crew ferry ships on long-awaited test flights later this year, but both companies face major challenges getting the spacecraft certified before late 2019 when seats aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft will no longer be easily available for NASA space station crews, officials told lawmakers Wednesday.