Live coverage: Space station crew safely returns to Earth

Officials hailed an action-packed three-minute test flight Tuesday over Cape Canaveral that exercised the Orion spacecraft’s launch abort rocket, a key safety system on the capsule NASA is developing to carry astronauts back to the moon.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral at 11:05 p.m. EDT (0305 GMT) tonight to send Orbital ATK’s commercial Cygnus cargo freighter to the International Space Station. Follow the mission in our live journal.

Carrying the ambition of an entrepreneur with a passion for connecting the world, a half-dozen satellites lifted off Wednesday aboard a Soyuz rocket from the edge of the Amazon jungle in South America to kick off a series of at least 21 planned launches to deploy OneWeb’s global Internet network.