Photos: Spectacular start to Delta 4-Heavy’s satellite deployment mission

A test-firing of a twice-flown Falcon 9 booster Friday at Cape Canaveral paved the way for SpaceX’s next launch, scheduled for Monday night with a heavyweight Boeing-built communications satellite to beam broadband signals to Japan and the Pacific islands.

A Russian-built Soyuz booster arrived at its tropical launch pad in South America on Friday and was joined with a European weather satellite for launch Tuesday night.

A heavy-duty crane towering over launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in recent weeks has removed several large sections of a disused structure once needed to install satellites and space station modules into space shuttle cargo bays.