Apollo 11 launch as broadcast live by NASA on July 16, 1969

SpaceX ignited the engines of its Falcon Heavy at 12:30 p.m. EST (1730 GMT) on Jan. 24 as it prepares for the maiden flight of the three-core rocket.

Teams at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi removed the core of NASA’s first Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket from a test stand earlier this week for loading onto a barge to carry it to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the rocket stage is due to arrive by the end of the month to start final preparations for a test flight around the Moon.

NASA’s $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope has completed critical end-to-end testing in a giant vacuum chamber at the Johnson Space Center, proving the telescope will work properly in the deep cold of space, bring starlight to a sharp focus and precisely track its astronomical targets when launched in 2019.