Video: Soyuz launches three-person international crew

Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing subsidiary, built two small satellites awaiting launch Thursday night on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket on a mission to test the effectiveness of a drag-inducing device that could help remove spacecraft from orbit.

Russia’s Progress MS-06 supply ship launched Wednesday aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, on the way to deliver food, fuel, spare parts, oxygen and water to the International Space Station’s crew.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Thursday, heading due east over the Atlantic Ocean to deliver the Es’hail 2 communications satellite into orbit around 32 minutes later.