Live coverage: SpaceX’s Starship rocket explodes on test flight from Texas

SpaceX trucked its Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft — refurbished with a new heat shield and structural enhancements — across the Cape Canaveral spaceport this week for attachment to a Falcon 9 rocket ahead of a planned liftoff next Thursday with four astronauts heading to the International Space Station.

A Soyuz rocket is scheduled to lift off Tuesday from a launch pad in Russia’s Far East with a new Russian weather satellite and 18 secondary payloads from companies and institutions in the United States, Canada, Japan, Norway, Sweden and Germany.

The final flight of Russia’s Rockot launcher took off Thursday and placed four satellites into orbit nearly 1,000 miles above Earth, ending a run of 31 launches since May 2000.