Falcon 9

A small spacecraft built for a NASA asteroid defense experiment arrived at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California earlier this month and is ready for fueling, one of the final milestones before liftoff in November on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The Italian Space Agency says it has booked a launch with SpaceX as soon as November for a COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation radar remote sensing satellite, shifting the spacecraft from a European Vega C rocket to a Falcon 9 flight from Cape Canaveral.

The Falcon 9 rocket used last week to launch the all-civilian Inspiration4 crew into space has returned to a SpaceX hangar at Kennedy Space Center for refurbishment ahead of a future mission.

The first all-private crew to fly into Earth orbit launched Sept. 15 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, streaking into space on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket powered by nine Merlin main engines.

With the backing of a billionaire businessman, four private citizens blasted off Wednesday night from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a first-of-its-kind fully commercial three-day spaceflight aboard a SpaceX crew capsule, riding to an altitude higher than any person has flown in two decades.

Photographers visited launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center early Wednesday to set up remote cameras. Photographer Michael Cain captured these views of the 215-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft ahead of liftoff on the Inspiration 4 private crew mission.