Live coverage: Three-man station crew lands in Kazakhstan

Blue Origin, the rocket company owned by Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, has won a $3.4 billion NASA contract to build an Artemis lunar lander that will provide a downstream alternative to the Starship variant already being developed by SpaceX, the agency announced Friday.

Astronauts Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer put on spacesuits Friday and headed outside the International Space Station for several repair and maintenance tasks, but the duo only completed part of their originally planned work after a leaky cooling umbilical delayed the start of their spacewalk.

Loaded with mice, plant specimens and the International Space Station’s first espresso machine, a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule arrived at the complex Friday with a fresh delivery of supplies. ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti grappled the spacecraft with the station’s robot arm at 6:55 a.m. EDT (1055 GMT).