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

Engineers clad in clean suits finished stowing last-minute cargo into SpaceX’s Dragon supply ship Friday, including 40 mice and bacterial research specimens, a day before it is scheduled to blast off to the International Space Station in the first flight from the Kennedy Space Center’s historic Apollo-era launch pad 39A since 2011.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket closed out a busy 2017 Cape Canaveral launch schedule on Dec. 15 with a successful liftoff on a space station resupply mission. The Falcon 9’s first stage booster, making its second launch, returned to Florida’s Space Coast for an on-target landing.

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.