Photos: Falcon takes flight

A day after aborting a rendezvous to resolve a navigation glitch, SpaceX’s Dragon cargo craft made a smooth final approach to the International Space Station on Thursday, floating in range of the research lab’s robot arm for capture at 5:44 a.m. EST (1044 GMT).

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket Sunday from Cape Canaveral with 143 small satellites, a record number of spacecraft on a single mission, giving a boost to startup space companies and stressing the U.S. military’s tracking network charged with sorting out the locations of all objects in orbit.

The Israeli satellite operator Spacecom has tapped a Falcon 9 rocket to deliver its next geostationary communications satellite to orbit in 2019 using approximately $50 million in credits the company paid SpaceX for a mission last year that ended in an explosion on the launch pad.