Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

United Launch Alliance’s next launch attempt for its Delta 4-Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral with a top secret U.S. government spy satellite will be delayed to no earlier than early Tuesday.

Axiom Space, a Houston-based company with plans to develop a commercial outpost in space, announced Thursday it has signed a contract with SpaceX to ferry a professional astronaut and three paying passengers to the International Space Station as soon as next year on the first fully private human spaceflight mission to Earth orbit.

A Russian cosmonaut, a German flight engineer and a NASA astronaut undocked from the International Space Station and plunged back to Earth overnight Wednesday, landing on the snowy steppe of Kazakhstan to wrap up a six-month mission.