Video: Soyuz MS-01 leaves the space station for landing

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sporting human-rating upgrades such as new composite pressurant tanks briefly ignited its nine Merlin engines Thursday afternoon on a launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and SpaceX later declared the pre-launch milestone complete in preparation for a critical test flight with a commercial crew capsule as soon as late February.

An experimental solar wing sent to the International Space Station earlier this month was jettisoned from the orbiting lab’s robotic arm after engineers were unable to fully retract the array.

The sixth commercial cargo delivery by Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft, and the first using an Antares rocket since a launch failure in 2014, will carry more than 5,000 pounds of equipment to the International Space Station.