Video: OA-7 Cygnus freighter departs International Space Station

Less than two weeks after its launch from Cape Canaveral, a new NOAA weather observatory has boosted itself into a circular orbit more than 22,000 miles over the equator, and officials have renamed it GOES-17 ahead of a test series before it enters service later this year.

A solid-fueled rocket booster fired for more than two minutes in Utah on Wednesday, spewing a torrent of glowing hot flame against a hillside in a key test for the Space Launch System, a behemoth rocket NASA is developing to send astronauts on long-distance voyages into space.

NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-M, a communications router for the space station and dozens of science spacecraft, blasted off from Cape Canaveral at 8:29 a.m. EDT on Friday atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.