Live coverage: Japanese supply ship launches in pursuit of space station

The Centaur upper stage destined to send Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner crew capsule into orbit on its first unpiloted test flight next year has arrived at Cape Canaveral after a sea journey aboard United Launch Alliance’s Mariner transport ship.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft emerged from the company’s hangar at the Kennedy Space Center early Thursday for the quarter-mile trip up the ramp to historic Launch Complex 39A, ready for final testing before liftoff on the first U.S. mission to carry astronauts into orbit in nearly nine years.

Spare parts warehoused in the the United States and Russia will help Boeing finish assembly of a third space station docking port to receive arriving astronauts aboard Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules, replacing a unit lost in a Falcon 9 launch failure last year.