Live coverage: Cygnus supply ship departs space station

Astra’s next small satellite launcher has shipped to Kodiak Island in Alaska for final preparations ahead of a test flight planned in early August, five months after the company’s first orbital rocket faltered before getting off the ground.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 8:25 a.m. EDT (1225 GMT) with 60 more Starlink internet satellites. SpaceX successfully recovered the first stage booster on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

NASA and Northrop Grumman managers at the Kennedy Space Center decided Tuesday to press ahead with final preparations to launch a NASA scientific research satellite early Wednesday aboard an air-launched Pegasus XL rocket off Florida’s east coast.