SpaceX conducts engine test fire for communications satellite launch (members only)

Slung under the belly of a specially-equipped carrier airplane, a Northrop Grumman Pegasus rocket took off Wednesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a two-day trek to a remote U.S. military test site in the Pacific Ocean, where crews will ready the air-dropped booster for launch of a NASA research satellite next week.

Sixty years ago Monday, a 27-year-old Russian test pilot named Yuri Gagarin strapped into a Vostok capsule in Central Asia and rode into orbit atop a launcher derived from a Soviet nuclear missile, becoming the first human to travel into the void of space. Twenty years later, in 1981, the era of reusable spacecraft dawned with the first launch of NASA’s space shuttle.

Six satellites built in France for OneWeb are set for blastoff Wednesday from French Guiana, the first of at least 21 launches using Russian-made Soyuz rockets to haul more than 600 of the refrigerator-sized craft to orbit for global broadband service.