Live coverage: Indian moon launch scrubbed

NASA officials released a nearly five-year, $28 billion plan Monday to return astronauts to the surface of the moon before the end of 2024, but the agency’s administrator said the “aggressive” timeline set by the Trump administration last year hinges on Congress approving $3.2 billion in the next few months to kick-start development of new human-rated lunar landers.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft glided to a smooth automated docking Monday night at the International Space Station, delivering four astronauts to join the three-person crew already on-board, boosting the size of the lab’s long-duration crew to seven for the first time.

As soon as next year, NASA plans to launch a CubeSat the size of a microwave oven into a unique elliptical orbit around the moon as a scout for the future lunar Gateway, a mini-space station NASA intends to use as a staging point for crewed lunar landings beginning as soon as 2024.