Photos: Tuesday’s Atlas 5 rollout

SpaceX and SES, owner of a 5.8-ton commercial telecom satellite poised for launch from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday, struck a deal to tweak the Falcon 9 rocket’s launch profile to give the SES 9 spacecraft a stronger push toward its operating post more than 22,000 miles above Earth.

NASA says initial checks show no damage to the Atlas 5 rocket or the agency’s asteroid-bound OSIRIS-REx spacecraft that stood within the Vertical Integration Facility just a mile away from the SpaceX explosion Thursday.

Blue Origin, the rocket company owned by Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, has won a $3.4 billion NASA contract to build an Artemis lunar lander that will provide a downstream alternative to the Starship variant already being developed by SpaceX, the agency announced Friday.