Live coverage: Kennedy Space Center to reopen Friday

A hundred days after the last U.S. commercial resupply of the International Space Station by a Cygnus cargo ship launched atop an Atlas 5 rocket, the booster and freighter duo will do it again Tuesday.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 8:29 a.m. EDT (1229 GMT) today to place NASA’s new tracking station into the sky. The data router will relay video, telemetry and science information from the space station and dozens of research satellites to a central ground terminal. Follow the ascent in our live journal.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Thursday evening, heading due east over the Atlantic Ocean to deliver the BulgariaSat 1 communications satellite into orbit 35 minutes later.