Live coverage: China launches three-man crew to Tiangong space station

Two astronauts ventured outside the International Space Station early Thursday and performed what amounted to hand transplant surgery on the lab’s Canadian-built robot arm, removing a crippled grapple fixture on one end of the space crane and replacing it with an on-board spare.

A new addition to China’s Beidou navigation network launched Monday on top of a Long March 3C rocket, which injected the satellite into an orbit more than 13,000 miles above Earth several hours later.

Engineers from Boeing and a team of subcontractors have finished building the first pair of six new solar arrays to bolster the International Space Station’s aging electrical system ahead of their launch to the orbiting outpost as soon as May aboard SpaceX’s next Cargo Dragon mission.