Live coverage: Falcon 9 disintegrates after launch

An international oceanography satellite arrived at its California launch base from a factory in France on Thursday for fueling, testing and other final preps before its scheduled Aug. 8 blastoff on a Falcon 9 rocket.

Aiming to reduce risk and costs, NASA has decided to launch the first two modules of the Gateway station in lunar orbit on the same heavy-lift rocket in 2023, rather than fly them on separate rockets and dock them together in deep space, according to the the agency’s chief human spaceflight manager.

SpaceX called off a try Sunday to launch a package of Orbcomm communications satellites from Cape Canaveral, eyeing a better chance to land the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage booster Monday, according to Elon Musk, the company’s billionaire founder.