Live coverage: International Space Station crew lands in Kazakhstan

The first Ariane 5 rocket scheduled for launch in 2018 has been topped off with two communications satellites for SES and Yahsat, moving the European booster closer to liftoff Thursday from a tropical launch pad in French Guiana with payloads to serve commercial and scientific missions.

A commercial lunar lander built by Astrobotic will launch from the Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in late 2023 to deliver a water-hunting NASA rover to the moon’s south pole, officials announced Tuesday.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will go from Cape Canaveral to low Earth orbit in less than 10 minutes Saturday with a Dragon capsule heading for the International Space Station carrying nearly 5,500 pounds of supplies and experiments.