Video: Tower rollback prior to launch of Mars Pathfinder atop a Delta 2

The next American polar-orbiting weather satellite that will feed long-range forecasts and track environmental trends has slipped into space-like testing ahead of launch.

NASA has decommissioned a long-lived satellite launched in 2000 that demonstrated remote sensing and surveying instruments and techniques common in today’s orbiting Earth observatories.

Launch pads and critical facilities at the Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station are braced for the onslaught of Hurricane Matthew overnight Thursday, one of the most powerful storms to threaten Florida’s Space Coast since the dawn of the space age 50 years ago.