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

SpaceX’s first Crew Dragon spacecraft wrapped up its five-day stay at the International Space Station at 2:31 a.m. EST (0731 GMT) Friday with a smooth undocking, then nailed an on-target splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean east of Florida at 8:45 a.m. EST (1345 GMT).

SpaceX plans to begin construction of a new rocket and spacecraft next year that could lead to human landings on Mars as early as 2024, scaling up technologies currently being perfected with the company’s Falcon 9 family of boosters to ensure reliability, reusability and, as a result, realistically low costs, founder Elon Musk said Friday.

United Launch Alliance kicked off its 2018 launch campaign with a Delta 4 rocket flight at 2:11 p.m. PST (5:11 p.m. EST; 2211 GMT) Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Gusty winds forced officials to call off a launch attempt Wednesday, and technical problems halted a countdown Thursday multiple times. The Delta 4 launched with a top secret spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office.