Live coverage: Atlas 5 countdown and launch journal

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter flew farther and faster Sunday than the rotorcraft’s first two test flights in the Martian atmosphere, traveling the length of a football field while exceeding distances and speeds achieved during testing on Earth, officials said.

Crowned with a European-built communications satellite designed to broadcast television over the Americas, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a previously-flown first stage booster lifted off Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39A Wednesday at 6:53 p.m. EDT (2253 GMT).

A recap of the successful start to Orbital ATK’s OA-7 resupply mission to the International Space Station is given in this post-launch news conference held at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center following the Atlas 5 rocket’s delivery of the Cygnus cargo ship into space.