Live coverage: Space station crew safely returns to Earth

A Progress refueling and resupply freighter linked up with the International Space Station’s Pirs docking compartment Monday, two days after blasting off from Kazakhstan with more than 2.6 tons of cargo, propellants and water.

A senior NASA official said Tuesday that the Space Launch System, a huge heavy-lift rocket years behind schedule, could launch astronauts on a moon landing mission in 2024 on just its third flight to meet a goal announced last month by Vice President Mike Pence, while commercial companies will be entrusted with more responsibility to develop a lunar lander and a modest mini-space station, or Gateway, in lunar orbit.

Russia’s Progress MS-05 supply ship lifted off Wednesday on top of a Soyuz-U rocket, climbing into orbit from a snow-covered launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on the way to the International Space Station.