Live coverage: Falcon 9 disintegrates after launch

The Falcon 9 rocket set to launch the SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule on a test flight in February briefly ignited its Merlin main engines on pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday. The Crew Dragon test flight to the International Space Station is a precursor to the spaceship’s first mission with astronauts later this year.

A Crew Dragon capsule ferried four astronauts into space Sunday night after a rumbling departure from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, setting off on a 27-hour pursuit of the International Space Station on SpaceX’s first operational crew rotation flight to the orbiting outpost.

A two-stage Northrop Grumman Antares rocket rolled out of its horizontal integration facility Monday for the mile-journey south to launch pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia, where liftoff on a space station resupply mission is scheduled for Wednesday.