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

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft were lowered horizontal on pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center the day before launch, allowing teams to address an issue with a chilled water loop near the top of the strongback structure.

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.

Investigators believe a leak of propellant inside the Crew Dragon spacecraft’s propulsion system led to the capsule’s explosion April 20 during a ground test at Cape Canaveral, and a senior SpaceX official said Monday that delays are making it “increasingly difficult” to fly astronauts on the commercial spaceship before the end of the year.