Live coverage: Dragon cargo craft arrives at space station

The Starlink 17-40 mission will add another 24 broadband internet satellites to SpaceX’s low Earth orbit constellation. Liftoff from pad 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base occurred at 9:09 a.m. PDT (12:09 p.m. EDT / 1609 UTC)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fired its nine first stage engines for a brief hold-down firing Friday at Cape Canaveral, passing a key milestone before launch July 24 with a Dragon space station resupply ship.

Boeing and SpaceX hope to launch commercial crew ferry ships on long-awaited test flights later this year, but both companies face major challenges getting the spacecraft certified before late 2019 when seats aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft will no longer be easily available for NASA space station crews, officials told lawmakers Wednesday.