Drone’s view of Sunday’s SpaceX rocket landing

Closing out 52 days at the International Space Station, an automated Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo craft left the research outpost Sunday to climb into a higher orbit for deployment of six CubeSats and further engineering experiments, before de-orbiting over Pacific Ocean later this month.

A Japanese HTV cargo craft is being prepped for liftoff Wednesday with a much-needed shipment of provisions for the International Space Station’s six-person crew after a spate of failures strained the orbiting lab’s supply chain with Earth.

Mission managers are weighing a motley mix of weather models, safety criteria and astronaut workload considerations as they decide when SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft might have the best chance to launch from the Kennedy Space Center.