Time-lapse video: The Falcon Heavy goes vertical again

A commercial Dragon supply freighter built and owned by SpaceX rocketed into a clear blue sky over Florida’s Space Coast Thursday with a menagerie of research experiments and holiday surprises heading for the International Space Station.

A reusable suborbital spaceplane the size of a business jet being developed by Boeing and the Defense Department’s research and development arm could be launching and landing at Cape Canaveral in 2020, officials said after the defense contractor won a competition last month to design and test the vehicle.

On the 30th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, crew families, friends and space workers gathered Thursday to remember the 17 men and women who lost their lives on the high frontier, 14 in two space shuttle disasters and three in an Apollo-era launch pad fire 49 years ago Wednesday.