A solid-fueled rocket motor mounted horizontally on a Utah hillside ignited and powered up to more than 3 million pounds of thrust Tuesday in a final full-up test-firing before a similar booster helps propel NASA’s huge Space Launch System away from Earth on a demonstration flight in 2018.

Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket will deliver the commercial Cygnus supply ship to an orbit with an altitude between 130 miles and 179 miles within about nine minutes of liftoff from Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

In a reshuffling of SpaceX’s launch schedule, a Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff no earlier than Dec. 8 on a mission to deliver several tons of supplies and experiments to the International Space Station and return to service a Cape Canaveral launch pad damaged in a catastrophic rocket explosion last year.