Live coverage: Russian-American-British crew launches toward space station

Four days after a picture-perfect blastoff from southern Japan, a cargo-carrying supply freighter arrived at the International Space Station on Tuesday with 4.5 tons of equipment, food, clothing and experiments.

Powered by two Russian-made RD-181 main engines, a Northrop Grumman Antares rocket fired into a mostly sunny sky Saturday afternoon over Virginia’s Eastern Shore carrying nearly 7,500 pounds of equipment to the International Space Station.

Investigators who studied the crash of the European Space Agency’s Schiaparelli lander on Mars last year have recommended more stringent testing and computer modeling before the launch of a joint European-Russian landing craft in 2020 to avoid a repeat of the mistakes that doomed the probe’s descent through the Martian atmosphere.