Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

Opening a new era in American spaceflight, a Falcon 9 rocket streaked into space early Saturday, boosting the company’s first Crew Dragon spacecraft into orbit on an unpiloted test flight, the first launch of a commercially developed capsule intended to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

Ready for a journey into the sun’s enigmatic, scorching corona, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has been encapsulated inside the nose cone of its Delta 4-Heavy rocket for liftoff Saturday.

With the SpaceX scrub earlier this week and the time needed to convert the Eastern Range over to the Delta 4, liftoff of that rocket carrying an internationally-purchased military communications satellite for the Air Force has been bumped to Saturday evening.