Video: Soyuz launches three-person international crew

SpaceX completed Friday the last drop test of the Dragon crew capsule’s parachutes before the first launch of astronauts on the human-rated ship May 27, while technicians at Cape Canaveral have mated the spacecraft’s crew module with its unpressurized trunk section.

Three space station residents crammed inside a capsule smaller than a compact car landed on the austere plans of Kazakhstan on Thursday, returning to Earth for their first taste of gravity and whiff of nature in nearly seven months.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 11:02 p.m. PDT Tuesday (2:02 a.m. EDT; 0602 UTC Wednesday) with another batch of 52 Starlink internet satellites.