Cygnus OA-6: What’s onboard?

The launch vehicle Orbital ATK wants to face off against SpaceX and United Launch Alliance for lucrative U.S. military contracts would be made of two internally-built solid rocket motors and an upper stage engine supplied by Blue Origin, the entrepreneurial space firm led by Jeff Bezos, an Orbital ATK official said this week.

One week after two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut arrived at the International Space Station for a six-month stay, the three crew members they’re replacing packed up their Soyuz spacecraft for a fiery plunge back to Earth Wednesday evening to close out a 196-day mission.

Two days after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, three new crew members arrived Friday at the International Space Station to begin a six-month stay. Docking of the crew’s Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft to the station’s Rassvet module occurred at 9:01 a.m. EDT (1301 GMT).