Live coverage: Soyuz crew lands in Kazakhstan

Two Chinese astronauts are busy with medical experiments and other duties as they near the halfway mark of a month-long stay aboard the Tiangong 2 space lab, according to state media reports.

Space station commander Jeff Williams and astronaut Kate Rubins plan to carry out their second spacewalk in two weeks Thursday, venturing back outside to retract a cooling radiator, install a high-definition TV camera, replace a burned-out light and inspect struts attached to a large solar array rotary mechanism.

Two key pieces of hardware needed for NASA’s next Mars rover — an Atlas rocket booster and sterile components of the rover’s sample collection system — recently arrived at Cape Canaveral ahead of the mission’s scheduled launch July 17.