Live coverage: Falcon 9 disintegrates after launch

A hold-down test-firing of a Falcon 9 rocket Friday at Cape Canaveral marked a major step in preparations for SpaceX’s 13th mission of the year, scheduled for liftoff Monday with a commercial communications satellite.

SpaceX has released the first close-up images and video of the Falcon Heavy rocket at launch complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The rocket was rolled out on December 28, 2017 and raised vertical on the launch pad.

NASA has decided to launch the multibillion-dollar Europa Clipper mission — a spacecraft to study a moon of Jupiter with an icy crust covering a liquid water ocean — aboard a commercial heavy-lift rocket in October 2024, and not on the government-owned Space Launch System, officials said Wednesday.