Live coverage: Space station crew safely returns to Earth

Closing out a 27-hour pursuit after a predawn launch from Florida’s Space Coast, a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule glided to an automated docking early Sunday at the International Space Station, accomplishing one of the ship’s key test objectives before astronauts take a ride later this year.

A hundred days after the last U.S. commercial resupply of the International Space Station by a Cygnus cargo ship launched atop an Atlas 5 rocket, the booster and freighter duo will do it again Tuesday.

NASA announced Thursday it will fund four concept studies for potential robotic missions to Venus, Jupiter’s moon Io and Neptune’s moon Triton ahead of a decision next year to approve up to two of the projects for launch in the mid-to-late 2020s.