Live coverage: Space station crew safely returns to Earth

Closing out a 30-day mission, a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule departed the International Space Station on Monday for a fiery trip back to Earth, culminating in re-entry back into the atmosphere and a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean southwest of Los Angeles.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said teams were meeting at the Kennedy Space Center on Friday, Dec. 20, to make some of the final determinations about how they will return dozens of samples from the Red Planet.

After a lull in launch activity this fall, SpaceX teams at Cape Canaveral are preparing for up to four Falcon 9 missions in December to close out 2019 with a surge of launches.