Live coverage: Three Chinese astronauts return to Earth

Boeing specialists working inside a former space shuttle hangar in Florida started fueling the company’s first spaceflight-ready Starliner capsule this week ahead of the ship’s rollout to its launch pad later this month. The fueling milestone is a major step in the Starliner launch campaign, and comes after engineers concluded that human error led to a parachute deployment malfunction during a crew capsule abort test Monday.

A Russian Progress cargo freighter lifted off Wednesday from Kazakhstan on top of a Soyuz-2.1a booster and completed a record-breaking 3-hour, 19-minute pursuit of the International Space Station with an automated docking to deliver 2.7 tons of food, fuel, water and other supplies.

A solid-fueled Kuaizhou 1A launcher carried a commercial broadband communications satellite into orbit Thursday for Galaxy Space, a Chinese company that says it plans to launch up to 144 spacecraft for a space-based 5G network in the next few years.