Live coverage: Kennedy Space Center to reopen Friday

SpaceX launched and landed an upgraded prototype for the company’s next-generation Starship vehicle in South Texas on Wednesday, the company’s first Starship test flight since winning a $2.9 billion NASA contract to use the craft to land astronauts on the Moon.

A little more than a year after the Falcon Heavy rocket’s first test flight, SpaceX teams on Florida’s Space Coast are readying the world’s most powerful operational launcher for its second mission Thursday with a commercial communications satellite.

Animation depicts the flight of Boeing’s Starliner commercial crew capsule, ascending into orbit atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket to reach the International Space Station and re-entry to make an airbag-cushioned touchdown on land.