Watch our interview with two International Space Station astronauts

In one of its final preflight tests, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket ignited at pad 39A in Florida for several seconds Thursday, ramping up to full throttle in an end-to-end checkout of the booster before liftoff next week on a space station resupply flight.

Japan’s Kounotori 6 cargo carrier will get a 15-minute boost from a powerful H-2B rocket to send the supply ship and its 4.5 tons of provisions and experiments on a four-day pursuit of the International Space Station.

SpaceX’s second Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off Thursday with the Arabsat 6A communications satellite. The world’s most powerful operational launcher lifted off from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 6:35 p.m. EDT (2235 GMT), and its three first stage boosters landed less than 10 minutes later — two back at Cape Canaveral and one on a drone ship at sea.