Photos: Atlas 5 rocket aims for International Space Station

SpaceX transferred the first astronaut-ready Crew Dragon spacecraft Friday night from a fueling facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where teams will join the capsule with its Falcon 9 launcher for liftoff later this month.

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.

The Japanese space agency said Wednesday the launch of an H-2A rocket with the country’s third navigation satellite was preemptively delayed at least 24 hours to Saturday to avoid thunderstorms with lightning in the forecast later this week.