Video: Space station’s robot arm captures Dragon cargo ship

Christina Koch, veteran of six spacewalks outside the International Space Station — including the first all-female excursion — will join a Russian commander and an Italian flight engineer for a fiery plunge back to Earth early Thursday, setting a new world record for the longest single flight by a female astronaut.

A commercial airlock built in partnership by NanoRacks and Boeing will be connected to the International Space Station in 2019, the companies announced Monday, after the proposed project won preliminary approval from NASA managers.

Space station commander Scott Kelly and flight engineer Kjell Lindgren are gearing up for their second spacewalk in nine days Friday, a planned six-and-a-half-hour excursion to reconfigure the ammonia cooling system used by one of the lab’s sets of solar arrays.