Photos: Final ULA mission of the year blasts off successfully

A prototype for SpaceX’s Starship space vehicle collapsed during pressure testing early Friday at the company’s facility in South Texas — the program’s third failure during such testing since November — but assembly of a new version is already underway.

An experimental satellite for Canon Electronics and nine Earth-imaging CubeSats for Planet fired into orbit from New Zealand on Wednesday on top of a Rocket Lab Electron booster, taking the place of similar spacecraft destroyed in a Rocket Lab launch failure in July.

We captured the sights and sounds of SpaceX’s Starbase launch complex in Texas on the eve of the first launch attempt for the fully-stacked Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket on a test flight aiming for near orbital velocity.