Live coverage: Kennedy Space Center to reopen Friday

A proud “Hubble Hugger,” the final commander of shuttle Discovery, the first person to fly a docking to the International Space Station and one of the first U.S. women to join the astronaut ranks were inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame on Saturday.

A shuttle-era RS-25 rocket engine was fired at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi on Thursday in the first test of a new engine control computer that will launch on the first flight of the agency’s Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket as soon as late next year.

The Starlink 11-39 mission lifted off from pad 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:06 a.m. PDT (10:06 a.m. EDT / 1406 UTC). The Falcon 9 rocket flew on a south-easterly trajectory.