Live coverage: Soyuz crew capsule departs station, lands in Kazakhstan

A series of achievements in China’s space program over the last 12 months have set the stage to start construction of the country’s first space station in 2019, a year later than previously scheduled, officials said Friday.

SpaceX launched a Korean communications satellite from Florida on Monday aboard the company’s third Falcon 9 rocket flight of the month. Liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center occurred at 3:34 p.m. EDT (1934 GMT), and the Falcon 9’s first stage landed on a floating barge in the Atlantic Ocean a few minutes later.

Water molecules have been directly detected across sunlit regions of the moon, not just in ultra-cold, permanently shadowed polar craters, scientists announced Monday, indicating the precious resource may be more easily accessible to future astronauts than previously thought.