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

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.

An experimental microsatellite built and owned by Astro Digital, a California-based company, rode Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket into orbit at 9:22 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0122 GMT Thursday) from New Zealand.

One week after two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut arrived at the International Space Station for a six-month stay, the three crew members they’re replacing packed up their Soyuz spacecraft for a fiery plunge back to Earth Wednesday evening to close out a 196-day mission.