Live coverage: Commercial cargo craft completes space station rendezvous

Climbing into a clear night sky, a Falcon 9 rocket soared into space early Thursday with the EchoStar 23 commercial communications satellite from launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Poor weather in the offshore recovery zone east of Florida forced SpaceX and NASA to delay the departure of an upgraded Cargo Dragon spaceship from International Space Station Monday. The capsule is bringing home several tons of research equipment, specimens, and other equipment.

NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) will be the primary payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launching no earlier than Sep. 23. The vehicle is joined by the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory and NOAA’s Space Weather Follow-On – Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) observatory.