Photos from last week’s Falcon 9 launch with Koreasat 5A

SpaceX said Sunday that the first Falcon 9 rocket launch from pad 39A, a former shuttle-era complex at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is scheduled to send a Dragon supply ship to the International Space Station in mid-February, deferring a mission with an EchoStar communications satellite that was set to take off this month.

The world’s most distant weather outpost is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Sunday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, launching to a point a million miles from Earth to warn forecasters of solar storms that could disrupt global air traffic, satellite navigation and power grids.

A $66 million NASA-funded science sensor package bolted on to a commercial communications satellite is ready for a ride toward a 22,000-mile-high orbital perch Thursday on a European Ariane 5 rocket, commencing a two-year mission surveying a rarely-studied region of Earth’s upper atmosphere.