Q&A with Keith Gendreau, principal investigator of the first X-ray space communications experiment (members only)

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying a Russian commander, a NASA flight engineer and a Japanese physician-astronaut docked with the International Space Station early Tuesday, capping a smooth two-day rendezvous to boost the lab’s crew back to six.

A normally reliable Soyuz FG rocket malfunctioned two minutes after liftoff from Kazakhstan Thursday, forcing a Russian cosmonaut and his NASA crewmate to execute an emergency abort and a steep-but-safe return to Earth a few hundred miles from the launch site. Russian recovery crews reported the crew came through the ordeal in good shape.

Canada’s three new Radarsat Earth observation satellites were encapsulated inside the payload fairing of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket ahead of their liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.