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

NASA has added extra safeguards to the agency’s standard pre-launch quarantine protocol to protect astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley from the coronavirus and other contagions in the final two weeks before their scheduled May 27 launch on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.

A Soyuz-2.1b rocket lifted off at 0541 GMT (1:41 a.m. EDT) Thursday from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East, carrying a new Russian weather satellite and 32 secondary payloads into polar orbit.

After a four-day delay due to a ground power supply anomaly and unfavorable weather, an Ariane 5 rocket lifted off at 4:23 p.m. EST (2123 GMT) Tuesday to send into orbit a hush-hush communications satellite for the Egyptian military and a spacecraft to expand the capacity of Inmarsat’s mobile Internet service.