Live coverage: SpaceX prepares for next Falcon 9 launch

A new European weather satellite is ready for launch Tuesday night aboard a Soyuz rocket from French Guiana, and these photos illustrate the final weeks of the spacecraft’s launch campaign.

Blue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, took another step toward launching people to the edge of space Wednesday with a test flight of its New Shepard booster and crew capsule over West Texas. “It’s time,” Bezos wrote on Instagram after the flight, suggesting Blue Origin plans to move forward with suborbital launches carrying human passengers above the atmosphere.

Held down by heavy-duty restraints, a Falcon 9 rocket fired up its nine Merlin engines for more than three seconds Thursday evening in a key readiness test before launching with a commercial television broadcast satellite next week.