Live coverage: Vega rocket blasts off from French Guiana on commercial flight

The Falcon 9 rocket set to launch the SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule on a test flight in February briefly ignited its Merlin main engines on pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday. The Crew Dragon test flight to the International Space Station is a precursor to the spaceship’s first mission with astronauts later this year.

Look back on last week’s blastoff of an Ariane 5 rocket from the edge of the Amazon jungle in French Guiana carrying four Galileo navigation satellites into orbit.

Arianespace officials have approved the rollout and launch of the final Ariane 5 flight of the year, set to blast off Wednesday from French Guiana to haul Brazilian and Japanese communications stations toward their orbital perches more than 22,000 miles above the equator.