Photos: Delta 4 lights up the sky for night owl launch

Forecasters predict a 60 percent chance of favorable weather for launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Thursday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to carry more Starlink broadband satellites into orbit.

United Launch Alliance teams began stacking an Atlas 5 rocket inside a vertical hangar at Cape Canaveral Monday in preparation for an early February launch with the Solar Orbiter spacecraft, a joint U.S.-European probe that will take the first pictures of the sun’s poles.

The Air Force’s robotic X-37B mini space shuttle swooped out of obscurity today after 718 days spent in orbit on a secretive military mission, touching down at the Kennedy Space Center’s orbiter runway on autopilot, the military announced on Twitter.