Live coverage: International Space Station crew lands in Kazakhstan

A European satellite that will collect daily air quality measurements over every major city on Earth rode an uprated Russian ballistic missile into orbit Friday.

A NASA official said Friday that SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft could be ready to ferry astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station as soon as early March, pending the results from a major demonstration of the ship’s launch abort system this weekend, a pair of parachute drop tests, and space station crew schedules.

A privately-funded airlock from Nanoracks will head for the International Space Station this weekend in the trunk of a SpaceX Cargo Dragon capsule, adding to the orbiting lab’s capacity for scientific experiments in another milestone for commercial space development.