Live coverage: Veteran three-man crew docks with space station

These photos show the 215-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft on pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, ready for launch on a test flight to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken when weather cooperates.

Entering the final months of a 12-year mission, Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft is again moving closer to the oddball comet that has engaged scientists since it arrived in 2014, heading for a controlled “smash” landing on the comet’s rugged charcoal-colored surface at the end of September.

The core stage of NASA’s first Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday evening aboard a specially-built barge, completing a voyage by sea from a test site in Mississippi to begin final preparations for the first flight of NASA’s Artemis Moon program. Ground crews plan to transport the core stage into the Vehicle Assembly Building beginning around 5:30 a.m. EDT (0930 GMT) Thursday to join its two solid rocket boosters.