Live coverage: SpaceX launches 60 more Starlink satellites

SpaceX will launch a space station-bound cargo ship with nearly 2.5 tons of supplies and experiments next Friday, Dec. 8, with a previously-flown Falcon 9 rocket booster after winning NASA approval for the reuse plan, agency officials said Wednesday.

A nearly three-month stoppage of on-site work due to concerns about the spread of the coronavirus at NASA’s Marshall Space Fight Center in Alabama is expected to push back the launch of the IXPE X-ray astronomy satellite from May 2021 until some time later next year, a senior space agency official said.

There were more successful space launches in 2014 than in any year since 1992, with Russia, the United States and China responsible for more than 80 percent of global launch activity.