Live coverage: Soyuz sends Russian and two Americans to space station

Fresh off a major design review, SpaceX’s human-rated Dragon spaceship has received the first of up to six firm mission orders from NASA under the company’s $2.6 billion commercial crew contract.

The Centaur upper stage launching the Cygnus space freighter Tuesday persevered through a velocity shortfall from the first stage of the Atlas 5 rocket, improvising with a longer firing to reach the correct orbit.

SpaceX’s next Crew Dragon capsule was delivered to Cape Canaveral this week from a California factory for a liftoff as soon as this spring with veteran NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on a test flight to the International Space Station, officials announced Friday.