Shuttle Atlantis unwrapped ahead of public debut

The successful maiden flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket in February was enough for the U.S. Air Force to certify the huge booster to carry the military’s most precious cargo into orbit, beginning with the mid-2020 launch of a classified payload under a $130 million contract awarded last week.

This zoomed-in shot shows SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket firing off launch pad 39A Thursday with the U.S. military’s X-37B spaceplane.

SpaceX conducted its first launch from Florida in more than two months Thursday, when a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center with the Qatari Es’hail 2 communications satellite at 3:46 p.m. EST (2046 GMT). The Falcon 9’s reused first stage landed on SpaceX’s drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.