Live coverage: International Space Station crew lands in Kazakhstan

Boeing and NASA officials said Thursday the first launch of astronauts on Boeing’s delay-prone Starliner crew capsule won’t happen in July after engineers recently discovered a problem with the spacecraft’s parachute system and identified flammable tape around wiring harnesses inside the vehicle.

SpaceX test-fired the Falcon 9 rocket early Saturday ahead of launch with the next four astronauts heading to the International Space Station. The static fire test before sunrise Saturday in Florida was a major step toward liftoff Thursday.

An experimental microsatellite built and owned by Astro Digital, a California-based company, rode Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket into orbit at 9:22 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0122 GMT Thursday) from New Zealand.