Photos: California’s predawn liftoff of Atlas 5 rocket

Five-and-a-half years ago, SpaceX founder Elon Musk revealed SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, a sleek-looking human-rated spaceship with 3D-printed engines, a roomy stylized interior and touchscreen controls. Now SpaceX’s first ship to ferry astronauts — with numerous design changes introduced since 2014 — is about to leave the company’s factory for final testing before launching early next year.

Streaking away from Cape Canaveral less than an hour before sunrise Wednesday, an Atlas 5 launcher painted a memorable spectacle in the skies over Florida, catching the first rays of the morning as it rocketed out of the stratosphere with a U.S. Navy communications satellite.

SpaceX test-fired its next Falcon 9 rocket Friday ahead of a planned launch Monday from Cape Canaveral with 60 more Starlink Internet satellites, days after an international group sounded another warning about the effects of large satellite fleets on astronomy.