Q&A with Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX (members only)

Cocooned inside the nose cone of its Falcon 9 rocket booster, the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane journeyed from a former space shuttle hangar at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, past the Vehicle Assembly Building and toward launch pad 39A last week ahead of liftoff Thursday.

SpaceX scrubbed a launch attempt early Wednesday at Cape Canaveral due to thick cloud cover, then delayed the liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket with an Airbus-built communications satellite for Arabsat until Friday night to wait for improved weather and to make room for the test-firing of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket at a neighboring launch pad.

The Falcon 9 rocket supporting the Starlink 10-61 mission will fly on a north-easterly trajectory upon departing Florida’s Space Coast. SpaceX launched from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 5:30 a.m. EDT (0930 UTC).