Live coverage: Atlas 5 countdown and launch journal

NASA announced Thursday it plans to purchase lunar soil from a commercial company, an effort the agency’s top official said is intended to set a precedent for the transfer of ownership of extraterrestrial material and stimulate a market harvesting resources from bodies throughout the solar system.

Air Force meteorologists are expecting good weather to launch the Delta 4 rocket with a military communications satellite when the sun goes down Friday evening at Cape Canaveral.

One of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket boosters made its second trip into space Friday, lofting a Bulgarian television broadcasting satellite from launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, then landing on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean. Liftoff occurred at 3:10 p.m. EDT (1910 GMT).