Live coverage: Two Americans, one Russian back on Earth from space station

Space station astronaut Kjell Lindgren said Tuesday he and commander Scott Kelly are big fans of Andy Weir’s book “The Martian,” adding they’re hopeful NASA will beam up a copy of the Ridley Scott movie as soon as it’s released.

Boeing said Tuesday it is “making excellent progress” toward launching a second unpiloted test flight of its Starliner crew capsule to the International Space Station by the end of this year or in early January, setting the stage for the first Starliner demonstration mission with astronauts in mid-2021.

A commercial Dragon supply freighter built and owned by SpaceX rocketed into a clear blue sky over Florida’s Space Coast Thursday with a menagerie of research experiments and holiday surprises heading for the International Space Station.