Photos: Sun sets on Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral

A commercial Dragon spaceship soared into orbit from Cape Canaveral on Saturday in pursuit of the International Space Station, but the automated craft’s Falcon 9 booster crash landed after flying back to Earth in a daring test of futuristic reusable rocket technologies.

Investigators probing the sudden failure of the Boeing-built Intelsat 29e geostationary relay station in April have concluded an electrostatic discharge, aggravated by a harness flaw on the spacecraft, or a micrometeoroid strike prematurely ended the satellite’s mission, resulting in a $382 million hit to Intelsat’s quarterly financial report.

NASA is moving forward with a crucial test-firing of the core stage of the first Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket as soon as Jan. 17 after engineers were satisfied with the results of a fueling test last month.