Live coverage: Japan’s H-2A rocket blasts off on first commercial flight

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket ignited its nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral on Tuesday evening in a critical milestone before liftoff with a commercial Thai communications satellite later in the week.

A Japanese Epsilon rocket launched Tuesday from the Uchinoura Space Center, a shoreline spaceport on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, with a space weather research probe to study phenomena inside the turbulent Van Allen radiation belts. Liftoff of the 85-foot-tall rocket occurred at 1100 GMT (6 a.m. EST).

SpaceX technicians at Cape Canaveral are readying for the first launch of an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket configuration next week, a mission that will debut changes to make the launcher safer for astronauts and make it easier — and less expensive — for the company to reuse first stage boosters.