Shuttle Atlantis unwrapped ahead of public debut

SpaceX is expected to transfer its next Falcon 9 rocket to launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday with a direct-to-home television broadcast satellite on-board, setting up for a two-and-a-half hour predawn launch window Tuesday.

Two days after lifting off from Florida’s Space Coast, a Dragon cargo capsule packed with more than 6,400 pounds of research experiments and crew supplies arrived at the International Space Station on Wednesday. Astronaut Jack Fischer used the station’s robotic arm to grapple the supply ship at 6:52 a.m. EDT (1052 GMT).

SpaceX completed Friday the last drop test of the Dragon crew capsule’s parachutes before the first launch of astronauts on the human-rated ship May 27, while technicians at Cape Canaveral have mated the spacecraft’s crew module with its unpressurized trunk section.