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

A SpaceX Cargo Dragon capsule parachuted to an on-target splashdown Wednesday night west of Tampa, returning more than two tons of experiment specimens from the International Space Station, including live rodents and a dozen bottles of space-aged French wine.

A Russian Soyuz booster arrived at its launch pad on the Kazakh steppe Sunday, the last stop before liftoff Wednesday with a three-person crew bound for the International Space Station.

A United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 3:40 a.m. local (6:40 a.m. EST; 1140 GMT) today to place a secret payload into space for the National Reconnaissance Office. Follow the mission in our live journal.