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

A SpaceX Dragon supply ship departed the International Space Station and returned to Earth Tuesday to conclude its third round-trip flight to the orbiting research outpost, bringing home a spacesuit, mice and and numerous experiments.

The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT) today to send NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on a seven-year, 4.4-billion-mile mission to rendezvous with Asteroid Bennu and bring a sample of the primordial object back to Earth. Follow the mission in our live journal.

The overnight mission saw the return of Falcon 9 booster, tail number B1073, which experienced an abort as its engine began firing during the June 14 launch attempt of the Starlink 10-2 mission. Liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station was at 4:55 a.m. EDT (0855 UTC).