Live coverage: Chinese sample return spacecraft completes docking in lunar orbit

The addition of a U.S. Air Force communications satellite has capped the assembly of a 218-foot-tall United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket at Cape Canaveral set for liftoff the evening of March 13.

United Launch Alliance could load cryogenic methane and liquid oxygen propellants into a Vulcan rocket test article at Cape Canaveral for the first time in the coming weeks, timing key tests for the next-generation rocket in between flights of Atlas 5 rockets that will share the same launch complex for the next few years.

A Chinese oceanography satellite designed to measure wave height and winds launched Monday aboard a Long March 4B rocket equipped with grid fins to help control the first stage’s descent back to Earth, an improvement aimed at keeping falling boosters away from Chinese villages.