Photos: Atlas 5 launches navigation craft from Cape Canaveral

Rocket and launch services company Orbex has begun construction at Sutherland Spaceport in Scotland with a ground-breaking ceremony on May 5 that marked the start of the first vertical launch spaceport to be built on mainland UK.

SpaceX fired up nine Merlin main engines at the bottom of a previously-flown Falcon 9 booster Saturday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, running the rocket through a practice countdown before a scheduled liftoff Jan. 18 with a Crew Dragon capsule to test the human-rated ship’s high-altitude abort capability.

A Glonass navigation satellite blasted off Sunday aboard a Soyuz rocket, reaching an orbit nearly 12,000 miles above Earth to join Russia’s fleet of positioning, navigation and timing spacecraft.