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

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.

Photos from the liftoff of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early Monday from Cape Canaveral show the 20-story launcher climbing into a starry sky with the SES 12 communications satellite.

Japan’s seventh HTV resupply mission to the International Space Station blasted off from Tanegashima Island on Saturday aboard an H-2B rocket. The unpiloted cargo carrier launched at 1752 GMT (1:52 p.m. EDT), kicking off a nearly five-day pursuit of the space station.