Live coverage: SpaceX supply ship returns to Earth

A new animation of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket set for a debut flight later this year shows how the powerful launcher will blast off from Kennedy Space Center’s famed Apollo-era launch pad 39A, and could eventually fly back to Florida’s Space Coast for refurbishment and reuse.

A Falcon 9 rocket powered by a recycled first stage lit its main engines for a hold-down firing on a launch pad Tuesday at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in preparation for launch with an Argentine radar satellite on a mission that will feature the first SpaceX booster landing on the West Coast.

This will be the first Cargo Dragon flight featuring a modified trunk that allows it to perform multiple orbital boosts of the International Space Station. SpaceX is targeting liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 2:45 a.m. EDT (0645 UTC).