Live coverage: Soyuz capsule brings home station crew

With an absence of fanfare amid coronavirus safety protocols, an upgraded Russian Soyuz rocket making its first piloted flight blasted off from Kazakhstan Thursday carrying two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut on a speedy four-orbit trip to the International Space Station.

SpaceX’s launch of a cluster of communications satellites for Orbcomm, set for as soon as next weekend, holds the headlines, but the company’s Falcon 9 rocket could fly at least four times in the next two months, assuming smooth launch campaigns and no glitches.

Despite protests from Texas lawmakers, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will manage the agency’s plans to build a lunar landing system that will carry the next man and the first woman to the surface of the moon in 2024, agency Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced Friday.