Live coverage: Four astronauts return home after 167 days in space

The mission came a little more than 12 hours after SpaceX performed a static fire test of the rocket Monday night. Liftoff of the Starlink 10-5 mission happened at 9:20 a.m. EDT (1320 UTC).

NASA will say goodbye to the Spitzer Space Telescope this week after more than 16 years observing the most distant galaxies ever detected, planets orbiting other stars, and star-forming clouds of dust and gas.

New videos released Wednesday by SpaceX show the payload fairing from the company’s Falcon Heavy rocket plunging back into the atmosphere after launch June 25, trailing a wake of haunting blue super-heated plasma before unfurling a parafoil and landing in the net of an offshore recovery ship.