Watch the Falcon 9 launch from pad 39A

Nearly a decade after Orbcomm raised the money to pay for a second-generation satellite fleet to drastically expand the company’s reach, the $230 million program is finally primed for completion after Monday’s launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral.

Cocooned inside the nose cone of its Falcon 9 rocket booster, the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane journeyed from a former space shuttle hangar at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, past the Vehicle Assembly Building and toward launch pad 39A last week ahead of liftoff Thursday.

SpaceX called off a Falcon 9 countdown Wednesday due to the threat of lightning from thunderstorms along Florida’s Space Coast, pushing back the departure of a cargo mission for the International Space Station until Thursday.