Live coverage: Two telecom satellites launched by Falcon 9, booster recovery fails

A nearly three-month stoppage of on-site work due to concerns about the spread of the coronavirus at NASA’s Marshall Space Fight Center in Alabama is expected to push back the launch of the IXPE X-ray astronomy satellite from May 2021 until some time later next year, a senior space agency official said.

The 330-foot-tall mobile service tower is rolled away from the United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket at Cape Canaveral’s pad 37B in the hours before the scheduled liftoff. The 9-million-pound gantry was retracted the length of a football field in preparation for launch of the Air Force’s WGS 9 communications satellite into Earth orbit.

With its liftoff just 18 days away to deploy a new Global Positioning System satellite, stacking of the next United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket began Monday at the vertical assembly building outside Complex 41.