Photos: Atlas 5 fulfills MUOS launch series with fifth successful launch

SpaceX teams at Cape Canaveral raised a Falcon 9 rocket vertical at the Complex 40 launch pad and performed a static fire test Friday. The Falcon 9 will be used to launch a commercial geostationary communications satellite no earlier than Monday at 7:10 p.m. EST (0010 GMT Tuesday).

Blue Origin teams in West Texas are preparing for another launch of the company’s reusable New Shepard suborbital rocket Thursday to loft dozens of microgravity research payloads to the edge of space.

SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket, sporting changes to make the booster easier to reuse, rolled out of its hangar and up the ramp to launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Thursday ahead of a planned hold-down engine firing.