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

Josef Aschbacher, head of ESA’s Earth observation programs, recently spoke with Spaceflight Now about the importance of the Sentinel 5P satellite mission designed for air quality measurements from space, and discussed increasing data usage from Europe’s Copernicus environmental network, and plans to expand the flagship Earth observation fleet.

NASA has picked 12 engineers, scientists and pilots to begin basic training for future spaceflight assignments from more than 18,300 applicants, adding U.S. military combat veterans, two medical doctors, an MIT professor, an expert on submersibles, a SpaceX launch engineer, a field biologist and a planetary geologist to the agency’s astronaut ranks.

These photos follow the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft through a final rehearsal, the late stowage of cargo, and finally the lifting of the launcher vertical atop pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.