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

A decommissioned missile originally built in Russia to deliver nuclear weapons to intercontinental targets in the United States vaulted out of a vertical canister Friday and fired into space with a European satellite to monitor global air pollution.

Boeing is touting a lunar lander concept that the company claims could launch in one piece on an upgraded version of NASA’s Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket — which Boeing largely builds — and deliver astronauts to the moon’s surface in 2024 without going through NASA’s planned Gateway mini-space station.

Two Russian cosmonauts and a U.S. Navy test pilot will buckle into custom-molded seats inside a Soyuz spaceship Wednesday, undock from the International Space Station and head for a parachute-assisted landing in Kazakhstan to close out a 167-day space voyage.