Photos: Atlas 5 rocket soars from West Coast

SpaceX test-fired nine Merlin engines Saturday before the company’s next launch from Cape Canaveral, clearing a key readiness test before liftoff as soon as Sunday night with 60 more Starlink internet satellites.

In the first official weather outlook the planned launch this week of NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, meteorologists predict an 80 percent chance of favorable conditions to allow liftoff of an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral Thursday.

A Soyuz rocket carrying a Russian commander, a NASA co-pilot and a United Arab Emirates guest cosmonaut blasted off from Kazakhstan Wednesday, chased down the International Space Station and glided in for a picture-perfect docking, kicking off an unprecedented end-of-year schedule that includes up to a dozen spacewalks.