Live coverage: Crew-8 splashdown off the coast of Pensacola, Florida

Flying with a reused first stage booster, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket climbed into orbit from Florida’s Space Coast early Monday with a commercial communications satellite for the Luxembourg-based operator SES.

NASA and industry teams at Cape Canaveral launched an Orion capsule on a three-minute atmospheric test flight Tuesday to prove the spaceship’s ability to escape from an exploding rocket during launch, demonstrating a key safety feature before astronauts ride the vehicle into deep space. Liftoff occurred at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT).

SpaceX’s 22-story Falcon 9 rocket stands on Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad Sunday, hours before the scheduled liftoff of a pair of commercial communications satellites for Eutelsat and Asia Broadcast Satellite.