Live coverage: Station crew lands in Kazakhstan

Blue Origin plans to begin crew flights of its suborbital New Shepard spacecraft on July 20, launching the highest bidder in an online auction out of the atmosphere and into space for a few minutes of weightlessness and an out-of-this world view before returning to Earth.

United Launch Alliance workers encapsulated the freighter on Wednesday with the 14-foot-diameter, 45-foot-long extra extended payload fairing (XEPF) at Kennedy Space Center’s Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility.

SpaceX’s Dragon supply ship departed the International Space Station on Wednesday, fired rocket thrusters to brake out of orbit, and parachuted to a picture-perfect splashdown in the Pacific Ocean with approximately 3,461 pounds of experiment samples and equipment.