Photos: Delta 4 lights up the sky for night owl launch

A NASA spacecraft being readied for launch in 2018 will make repeated trips through the sun’s outer atmosphere, passing within 4 million miles of the star’s blazing surface at more than 430,000 mph to shed light on what powers the sun’s high-temperature corona, the origins of the solar wind and the causes of potentially catastrophic solar storms.

With a robot rather than a cosmonaut in the commander’s seat, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft rocketed into orbit from Kazakhstan late Wednesday (U.S. time) en route to the International Space Station on a critical test flight before crews begin riding an upgraded Soyuz booster next year.

United Launch Alliance plans to assemble leftover parts for a Delta 2 rocket display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida alongside other icons of U.S. rocketry, the company announced Saturday soon after the final Delta 2 launch.