Photos: Falcon takes flight

Running through a practice countdown and hold-down engine firing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket passed a key checkpoint Thursday ahead of liftoff next week with the U.S. Air Force’s fifth X-37B spaceplane flight, a mission that will come with several firsts.

The touchdown of booster 1075 marked SpaceX’s 450th Falcon booster landing. Liftoff from pad 4 East happened at 3:32 p.m. PDT (6:32 p.m. EDT, 2232 UTC).

Opening a new era in American spaceflight, a Falcon 9 rocket streaked into space early Saturday, boosting the company’s first Crew Dragon spacecraft into orbit on an unpiloted test flight, the first launch of a commercially developed capsule intended to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.