Photos: Atlas 5 rocket soars from West Coast

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket slated to launch two NASA astronauts into orbit May 27 test-fired its nine Merlin booster engines Friday, May 22, on launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

A Falcon 9 rocket and 60 more Starlink internet satellites set for launch early Sunday at Cape Canaveral will mark the first time SpaceX has flown a first stage 10 times, reaching a milestone that the company once said could be a limit for reusing boosters. Now SpaceX plans to keep flying reused rockets on Starlink missions until one fails.

Running more than three months late, a United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket took off Thursday and carried a U.S. government spy satellite into an orbit thousands of miles above Earth in the first mission from the newly-renamed Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.