Live coverage: SpaceX Falcon Heavy launches NASA’s Psyche on mission to a metal asteroid

A video from SpaceX shows the company’s Crew Dragon capsule plunging toward the Gulf of Mexico, then unfurling a series of parachutes to slow the spaceship carrying two NASA astronauts from 350 mph to a relatively gentle 15 mph for splashdown Sunday.

A sun-splashed Florida afternoon was the setting for Tuesday’s liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket, which fired its nine-engine booster stage and climbed into space with a commercial cargo spacecraft en route to the International Space Station.

An Ariane 5 rocket delivered a robotic space tug and a pair of commercial communications satellites into orbit Saturday following a fiery blastoff from French Guiana, debuting new upgrades in Arianespace’s first mission since temporarily suspending launch operations earlier this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.