Shuttle Atlantis unwrapped ahead of public debut

NASA civil servants and the agency’s contractor work force are bracing for high winds and rain from Hurricane Dorian, securing rocket stages, spacecraft assembly areas and even hauling a 6.7-million-pound mobile launch tower, designed for the huge rocket being built for the Artemis moon program, back to the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building for safekeeping.

SpaceX scrubbed an attempt to launch a commercial Falcon 9 rocket Sunday less than a minute before liftoff, blaming a sensor issue on the vehicle’s first stage and pushing back the company’s first national security mission for the U.S. government at least 24 hours.

Launching into a clear autumn sky at sunset, a Falcon 9 rocket took off Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and delivered the SES 11/EchoStar 105 communications satellite to orbit.