Q&A with Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO

SpaceX’s upgraded Falcon 9 booster powered up to full throttle in a brief ignition at the company’s Central Texas test site this week as engineers prepare for the rocket’s return to flight as soon as mid-November with a European communications satellite.

The first Ariane 5 rocket scheduled for launch in 2018 has been topped off with two communications satellites for SES and Yahsat, moving the European booster closer to liftoff Thursday from a tropical launch pad in French Guiana with payloads to serve commercial and scientific missions.

More than six years after back-to-back failures left the Taurus rocket with an uncertain future, a redesigned version of the launcher sporting a new name is set to loft 10 small Earth-imaging satellites into orbit Tuesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.