Live coverage: Orion lands in Pacific

The most powerful version of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT) today on a three-hour flight to deploy a U.S. Navy mobile communications satellite into orbit. Follow the mission in our live journal.

A former space shuttle orbital maneuvering system engine has been delivered to Germany for attachment to the European-built service module destined to steer NASA’s next Orion spacecraft on a course around the moon on an uncrewed test flight in late 2018.

A previously-flown SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster conducted a test-firing Monday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ahead of a planned launch Oct. 7 with an Airbus-built communications satellite made for SES and EchoStar.