The booster rocket that will launch NASA’s next-generation Orion space capsule on a two-orbit, four-hour shakedown cruise in December has been rolled to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.

Two pilots aboard Virgin Galactic’s commercial SpaceShipTwo suborbital rocketplane safely landed back in New Mexico Saturday after a “computer communications loss” triggered an abort of the craft’s engine ignition sequence.

Working amid coronavirus restrictions, engineers readied a Soyuz spacecraft for launch Thursday to ferry two Russian cosmonauts and Navy SEAL-turned-astronaut Chris Cassidy to the International Space Station.