Live coverage: Chinese sample return spacecraft completes docking in lunar orbit

Two NASA spacecraft — the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission and the New Horizons probe at the edge of the solar system — have captured their first looks at their targets as they approach a pair of primordial relics for the first time.

There was a groundbreaking Friday at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 to start building the astronaut access tower to board Boeing’s CST-100 capsules atop United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rockets.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket boosted by a recycled first stage fired into the skies over the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 15, and these photos show the start of the 229-foot-tall launcher’s journey into orbit.