Falcon 9

It’s launch week at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where SpaceX is gearing up for liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket with the Inspiration4 mission, the first all-private human spaceflight to low Earth orbit. SpaceX completed a test-firing of the Falcon 9 rocket early Monday.

SpaceX raised a Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule on pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Sunday, kicking off a busy few days before launch of the all-private Inspiration4 crew mission as soon as Wednesday night.

The four private citizens who will fly into orbit later this month on a chartered SpaceX capsule visited their spaceship at Cape Canaveral this week for fit checks. On Wednesday, officials released the first pictures of the cupola window attached to the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft, a new addition that will offer the crew expansive views of planet Earth from an altitude of more than 350 miles.

SpaceX launched a Dragon cargo capsule from Florida on a thundering predawn ascent into orbit early Sunday aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, kicking off the company’s 23rd commercial resupply flight to the International Space Station. The rocket’s reusable booster was the first to land on a new SpaceX drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

Forecasters on Friday predicted a 60% chance bad weather on Florida’s Space Coast could prevent the scheduled launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early Saturday to begin an automated resupply mission to the International Space Station.

On the cusp of ending a two-month SpaceX launch drought, ground crews raised a Falcon 9 rocket vertical Wednesday on its launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for an engine test-firing and final cargo loading before liftoff Saturday on a resupply flight to the International Space Station.

After going through July with no launches, SpaceX is scheduled to resume missions in August with Falcon 9 rocket flights from California and Florida to commence deployment of the next generation of Starlink internet satellites.

A new SpaceX drone ship named “A Shortfall of Gravitas” was towed into Port Canaveral Thursday, completing a shuffling of SpaceX’s rocket landing platforms to support upcoming launches from Florida and California.