Video: Falcon 9 fires up engines for static fire test (members only)

Succeeding on a one-shot launch attempt before Hurricane Irma shuts down the Cape Canaveral spaceport, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket thundered into orbit Thursday with the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane, a reusable robotic mini-shuttle that could stay aloft for years with clandestine on-board experiments.

Clad in pressurized spacesuits, two Russian cosmonauts headed outside the International Space Station on Wednesday and hand-released four tiny CubeSats and installed hardware for a German experiment to track animal migration.

SpaceX continued launching satellites for the Starlink internet network Friday, sending a Falcon 9 rocket aloft from Cape Canaveral with 56 more older-generation broadband spacecraft as ground teams troubleshoot problems with a batch of upgraded Starlinks launched last month.