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

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad Tuesday at 12:33 a.m. EST (0533 GMT) with Hispasat 30W-6, a communications satellite to relay video and broadband signals between the Americas, Europe and North Africa.

Three new residents completed the final leg of their pursuit of the International Space Station, with docking to the complex at 2158 GMT (4:58 p.m. EST) Saturday, two days after blastoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz capsule carrying the U.S.-Russian-French crew linked up with the research lab’s Rassvet module.

Alan Bean, a Navy test pilot and astronaut who walked on the moon and then spent two months aboard America’s first space station before leaving NASA and becoming an accomplished artist, painting moonscapes and space vistas that garnered widespread critical praise, died Saturday. He was 86.