Live coverage: Atlas 5 countdown and launch journal

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket made its third trip to a Cape Canaveral launch pad Thursday, rolling into position for liftoff Friday afternoon with a classified payload for the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency.

The Falcon 9 rocket set to launch the SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule on a test flight in February briefly ignited its Merlin main engines on pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday. The Crew Dragon test flight to the International Space Station is a precursor to the spaceship’s first mission with astronauts later this year.

The next batch of 36 OneWeb internet satellites lifted off at 6:14 p.m. EDT (2214 GMT) from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East. The Florida-built broadband satellites rode into orbit on a Russian Soyuz rocket procured under a contract with Arianespace.