Watch the Falcon 9 launch from pad 39A

Fifty years to the day after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon, a NASA astronaut, an Italian flight engineer and a Russian commander geared up for launch aboard a Soyuz spacecraft Saturday on a six-hour flight to the International Space Station.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sporting a fresh cleaning and several refurbishments took off Thursday from a seaside launch pad in Florida to send an SES communications satellite into space, then landed on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean to repeat a feat the same booster achieved nearly one year ago.

A new space weather observatory to be stationed a million miles from Earth has been enclosed inside the nose cone of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for liftoff Sunday from Cape Canaveral.