Live coverage: Three Chinese astronauts return to Earth

SpaceX’s second Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off Thursday with the Arabsat 6A communications satellite. The world’s most powerful operational launcher lifted off from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 6:35 p.m. EDT (2235 GMT), and its three first stage boosters landed less than 10 minutes later — two back at Cape Canaveral and one on a drone ship at sea.

NASA will unveil the four crew members Monday who will fly around the moon on the first piloted flight of the agency’s Orion deep space capsule on the Artemis 2 mission as soon as late next year.

A sharp-eyed Chinese Earth-imaging satellite rode a Long March 4B booster into orbit Tuesday, tying the record for the highest number of space launches China has achieved in a single year.