Video: Soyuz MS-01 leaves the space station for landing

Fresh off a major design review, SpaceX’s human-rated Dragon spaceship has received the first of up to six firm mission orders from NASA under the company’s $2.6 billion commercial crew contract.

SpaceX is targeting launches March 6 and March 11 for its next two missions after swapping an upper stage for its next Falcon 9 rocket with another stage already being readied for liftoff at Cape Canaveral.

A Russian Soyuz booster lifted off Friday from Kazakhstan on a complex mission to deploy 73 satellites into three different orbits, including a Russian spacecraft to locate forest fires, 48 CubeSats for Planet’s global Earth observation fleet, and eight nanosatellites for Spire Global’s commercial weather network.