Live coverage: Irma knocks out power at Kennedy Space Center

Kennedy Space Center officials said Tuesday that Hurricane Matthew knocked out the main cooling system for the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building and surrounding structures, but they expect no lingering effects from the storm on NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion spaceship scheduled for their first full-scale test flight around the moon in 2018.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 5:49 a.m. local time (8:49 a.m. EDT; 1249 GMT) Thursday on the classified National Reconnaissance Office NROL-55 mission.

A Russian-built Soyuz booster lifted off Friday from the European-run spaceport in French Guiana, carrying four new broadband Internet satellites to orbit to join the O3b network owned by SES. Launch occurred at 1710:06 GMT (12:10:06 p.m. EST).