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

NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, have agreed to extend astronaut Peggy Whitson’s stay aboard the International Space Station by three months to enable uninterrupted research aboard the orbital laboratory during a period when Russia is temporarily reducing its crew complement, the U.S. space agency said Wednesday.

Three space station residents crammed inside a capsule smaller than a compact car landed on the austere plans of Kazakhstan on Thursday, returning to Earth for their first taste of gravity and whiff of nature in nearly seven months.

A Falcon 9 rocket is again standing upright on launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida after ground teams lowered the booster Friday to swap out mice heading to the International Space Station for medical experiments.