Live coverage: Two-man crew departs space station, returns home

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft were lowered horizontal on pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center the day before launch, allowing teams to address an issue with a chilled water loop near the top of the strongback structure.

Astronauts will likely perform a previously-unplanned demonstration of the Orion spacecraft’s deep space rendezvous capabilities in a high-altitude orbit around Earth on the crew capsule’s first piloted test flight, now scheduled for 2023. 

A Russian Soyuz rocket rolled to its launch pad in Kazakhstan early Monday aboard a specially-designed rail car, three days before sending a Russian cosmonaut and U.S. astronaut to the International Space Station.