Watch as Progress docks with Space Station bringing a holiday delivery

A Russian Soyuz-2.1a rocket rolled out to a launch pad Monday at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, ready for the first crewed flight to use the modernized Soyuz booster configuration. Liftoff with two Russian cosmonauts and a veteran NASA astronaut is scheduled Thursday on an expedition to the International Space Station.

SpaceX’s upgraded Dragon capsules will not return astronauts to Earth for powered landings as originally envisioned, company boss Elon Musk said Wednesday, a design change that raises questions about the space transport firm’s plans to send commercial landers to the surface of Mars.

SpaceX’s ground team hydraulically hoisted a 213-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket vertical at pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center before dawn Monday ahead of a planned liftoff with a space station-bound robotic resupply craft.